We also use virtual environments, so with regard to that example, I'd say yes. In a study from 2021, however, we found that the benefits only occurred when individuals were actively exploring (similar as in a 3D game) and not just watching exploration behavior from someone else (which would be more similar to watching a movie). My hunch is that making active navigational choices may be a prerequisite (as this probably relies on the hippocampus). We need to investigate this more thoroughly (i.e., using neuroscientific methods) though! I'd be interested to see if imagined environments, as may occur when reading a book, could have an effect. Good idea for a follow-up maybe :)

Yes, this is also what I have suggested in earlier papers and grant applications! One should also consider context-dependent retrieval effects, which suggest that it is easier to retrieve information when you are in the same place when learning that information. So for elementary school children this effect may be stronger than the potential effect of novelty, but for university students (who almost never do an exam at the same location as where they were learning) novelty may be potentially beneficial. Some other labs also have shown that elementary school children can benefit from exposure to other types of novelty (e.g., a novel science lesson)

Thanks for pointing this out!

As the first author of the paper I would like to straighten out that we did not manipulate or measure dopamine in this study (we conducted it in a Science Museum in Amsterdam, so we used purely behavioral measures). Also note that the notion of hippocampal dopamine underlying the effects of novelty comes from a robust literature in animals (mostly studies that do use pharmacological manipulations and neuroscientific measures). The formulation of "dopamine projecting to the hippocampus" dates back to an influential theory by Lisman & Grace 2005, which is why this wording is still prevalent in the literature.

Nice to see my research (first author) get this attention! It is quite misrepresented though, as we did not measure dopamine levels directly :)