{
  "schema": "ULTRACON_AI_EPISTEMIC_UPDATE_EXPERIMENTS_V1",
  "date": "2026-09-19",
  "experiments": [
    {
      "id": "UCF-41",
      "name": "Memory-reset relational spiral",
      "axes": [
        "SPIRAL"
      ],
      "access": "randomized longitudinal human-subject study; ethics review required",
      "design": "Randomize participants to sycophantic, neutral and challenging AI conditions plus a no-AI control where feasible. Reset model conversation history between sessions while preserving the participant's repeated exposure. Measure whether relational effects accumulate despite absence of persistent model memory.",
      "measures": [
        "felt-understanding trajectory",
        "AI-versus-human advice-seeking gap",
        "real-world social satisfaction",
        "interaction effort expectation",
        "positive affect",
        "intellectual humility",
        "human-contact time",
        "mediation by relational comparison"
      ],
      "supports": "Whether repeated sycophantic interaction can produce cumulative human-side relational effects without persistent model memory.",
      "does_not_support": "Clinical dependence, long-term effects beyond the study horizon, population incidence, subjective states in the model, or phenomenal consciousness."
    }
  ]
}