Ig Nobel Prize winner explains about ``Jamev'', which makes you feel a strong sense of discomfort when you repeat the same task over and over again

'Déjà vu' is when you somehow feel like you've had the same experience in the past, even though you're experiencing it for the first time. The opposite of déjà vu is the unrealistic experience of seeing something that you have seen many times before, but it is called ``jamevu.'' Psychologists Akira O'Connor and Christopher Moulin, who won the 2023 Ig Nobel Prize for Literature for their research on Jamev, explain Jamev.

Jamais vu: the science behind eerie opposite of déjà vu
https://theconversation.com/jamais-vu-the-science-behind-erie-opposite-of-deja-vu-213596

The 2023 Ig Nobel Prize is summarized in the article below. Mr. O'Connor and Mr. Moulin are ``studying the feeling of remembering a word when you repeat it over and over and over and over again.''2023 He was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for Literature.

A summary of all 10 categories of the 2023 Ig Nobel Prize, which is recognized for ``research that makes people laugh and think'', and a Japanese person wins the nutrition award - GIGAZINE

Regarding Jamevu, research has not progressed much compared to Dejavu. O'Connor and his colleagues believed that it would be easy to conduct an experiment to induce jamev, and spent 15 years conducting research.

Jamev's verification experiment was simple, and the first thing that was done was to have 94 university students write the same word over and over again. The participants copied 12 types of words into their notebooks over and over again, ranging from common words to words they rarely see.

O'Connor and his team asked participants to ``copy the words as quickly as possible,'' but ``if you feel discomfort, boredom, or pain in your hands, you can stop the task.'' I told him. As a result, about 70% of the subjects felt a sense of discomfort similar to that of Jamev, so they stopped working at least once.

It is said that Jamev's interruption of work occurred when he copied the word approximately 33 times, and it took about 1 minute in terms of time. It is also said that jamev occurred when the word being transcribed was a well-known word.

In the second experiment, we used only the definite article 'the' over and over again. 55% of the subjects stopped working because of Jamev. Up until Jamev, I copied 'the' an average of 27 times.

Subjects who stopped working said, ``The more I looked at the words, the less I understood what they meant,'' ``I felt like I was losing control of my hands,'' and ``It felt like the words weren't right, and that I was actually being tricked by someone, not the words.'' He said he felt that way.

In their paper, O'Connor et al. argue that ``transformation and loss of meaning through repetition is accompanied by a special sense of jamev.'' O'Connor and his colleagues say, ``Jamev is a signal that a task has become too automated, too fluent, too repetitive, and it takes you out of the process you're currently in. It feels unreal. is actually a reality check.'

Our cognition must remain flexible. Mr. O'Connor and his colleagues argue that it is more rational to focus attention where it is needed rather than immersing yourself in simple repetitive tasks for a long time, and that Jamev is a system for correctly guiding cognition.

O'Connor and his colleagues also believe that Jamev's research will lead to insights into the effects of performing the same actions over and over again, such as writing down the same words over and over again, on human cognition. For example, if you repeatedly check whether you have locked your house when you go out, it becomes cognitively difficult to check whether the door is locked or not, leading to a vicious cycle.

'Ultimately, we are honored to have won the Ig Nobel Prize in Literature. Winners of such awards contribute scientific works that 'make you laugh and make you think.' We hope that our research on Jamev will lead to more research and further insights in the near future.'