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The complex act of projecting oneself into the future
Abstract
Research on future-oriented mental time travel (FMTT) is highly active yet somewhat unruly. I believe this is due, in large part, to the complexity of both the tasks used to test FMTT and the concepts involved. Extraordinary care is a necessity when grappling with such complex and perplexing metaphysical constructs as self and time and their co-instantiation in memory. In this review, I first discuss the relation between future mental time travel and types of memory (episodic and semantic). I then examine the nature of both the types of self-knowledge assumed to be projected into the future and the types of temporalities that constitute projective temporal experience. Finally, I argue that a person lacking episodic memory should nonetheless be able to imagine a personal future by virtue of (1) the fact that semantic, as well as episodic, memory can be self-referential, (2) autonoetic awareness is not a prerequisite for FMTT, and (3) semantic memory does, in fact, enable certain forms of personally oriented FMTT. WIREs Cogn Sci 2013, 4:63-79. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1210 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.
Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
... Even though future thoughts are as common as memories in our daily life, our capacity to remember has received significantly more scientific attention than our capacity to think about the future. But in the last 20 years, researchers have shown an increased interest in future thinking, specifically in one particular aspect of it: episodic future thinking (also known as episodic foresight, episodic simulation, or prospection; for reviews, see Klein, 2013;Schacter, 2012;Szpunar, 2010). Episodic future thinking is usually defined as the capacity to project oneself into the future, and it is often studied in parallel with episodic memory for three principal reasons (Dudai & Carruthers, 2005;Suddendorf & Corballis, 1997). ...
... Second, they draw on the same information stored in our episodic and semantic memory (Atance & O'Neill, 2001;Buckner & Carroll, 2007;Klein, Cosmides, Tooby, & Chance, 2002;Schacter, Addis, & Buckner, 2008;Suddendorf & Corballis, 2007). Third, researchers also have argued that thinking about the future is one of the major functions of memory (Klein, 2013;Schacter, 2012;Schacter et al., 2012;Suddendorf, Addis, & Corballis, 2009;Tulving, 2005). ...
... First, planning is an important part of our daily life and seems to be a major aspect of future thinking (Baird et al., 2011;. At the same time, planning has evolutionary benefits (Klein, 2013;McCormack, Hoerl, & Butterfill, 2011) and is regarded as an important developmental achievement, with many studies investigating planning in children (McCormack & Atance, 2011). Indeed, being able to simulate and anticipate what could occur as well as the consequences for our actions offers a unique advantage in our dayto-day lives. ...
... Under these (very unusual) circumstances, the normally invisible relation between content and personal ownership is made apparent by its absence. The afflicted individual may discover (e.g., via inference) that she or he authored the content, but this knowledge does not confer a directly given sense of personal ownership (e.g., Klein, 2013aKlein, , 2015aKlein, , 2015bKlein, , 2016a. Absent the ability to take possessory custody of content normally associated with self (e.g., my thoughts, my bodily appendages), subjective awareness is accompanied by a bewildering feeling of disconnectedness-i.e., what should be "self" is experienced as "non-self" (i.e., as other; e.g., Earle, 1972;Klein, 2014a;Klein & Nichols, 2012;Lane, 2012;Zahavi, 2005). ...
... The connection between content in consciousness and types of ownership is not intrinsic (X is an intrinsic property of Y if Y's having the Property X does not consist in Y also having a relation, Z, to something else). Rather it is one of contingency (i.e., it is annexed to, rather than a basic constituent, of the intentional object; Klein, 2013aKlein, , 2014aKlein, , 2014cKlein, , 2014dKlein, , 2015aLane, 2012). Patient R. B., for example, lost and subsequently regained personal ownership of the content retrieved into consciousness (e.g., Klein & Nichols, 2012). ...
... The form of Subjective Temporality directly relevant to present concerns is called mental time travel (for reviews see Klein, 2013a;Michaelian, 2016;Tulving, 2002;Suddendorf & Corballis, 1997Szpunar, 2010). Mental time travel refers to the possibility that a firstperson perspective can be subjectively located 1 An exception to this "process blindness" occurs when the mechanisms that enable Personal Ownership are compromised by clinical disorders (e.g., depersonalization, somatoparaphrenia). ...
Although the dream narrative, of (bio)logical necessity, originates with the dreamer, he or she typically is not aware of this. For the dreamer, the dream world is the real world. In this article, I argue that this nightly misattribution is best explained in terms of the concept of mental ownership (e.g., Albahari, 2006; Klein, 2015a; Lane, 2012). Specifically, the exogenous nature of the dream narrative is the result of an individual assuming perspectival, but not personal, ownership of the content she or he authored (i.e., “The content in my head is not mine. Therefore it must be peripherally perceived”). Situating explanation within a theoretical space designed to address questions pertaining to the experienced origins of conscious content has a number of salutary consequences. For example, it promotes predictive fecundity by bringing to light empirical generalizations whose presence otherwise might have gone unnoticed (e.g., the severely limited role of mental time travel within the dream narrative).
... There are different reasons to expect that the thematic content of future chapters will mirror the lower agency and communion themes of past chapters. First, studies have shown that imagining the future relies on many of the same processes as remembering the past (Klein, 2013;Schacter et al., 2013;Szpunar, 2010). Thus, given that individuals with schizophrenia construct their past life story with diminished levels of agency and communion, this pattern may extend to their future life stories. ...
... This is surprising for several reasons. First, remembering the past and imagining the future rely on many of the same cognitive and neural processes (Klein, 2013;Schacter et al., 2013;Szpunar, 2010). Following this research, we would have expected to see a spillover of the diminished themes of agency and communion from the past to the future. ...
Research has linked disturbances in narrative identity with schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. One such disturbance is diminished agency and communion themes in past life stories. However, projecting oneself into the future is also central to identity and potentially impacts recovery. Hence, we examined themes of agency and communion in both past and future life stories and related themes to psychosocial functioning in 20 individuals with schizophrenia, 20 individuals with depressive disorder, and 19 nonpsychiatric controls. Participants were asked to describe up to 10 past and future chapters in their life stories and were assessed on psychosocial functioning and neurocognition. Chapters were coded for agency and communion themes. Both clinical groups displayed diminished agency and communion themes in past but not future life story chapters compared with the nonpsychiatric controls. Furthermore, agency themes in future chapters explained variance in psychosocial functioning after controlling for neurocognition. The results suggest that constructing a narrative identity to foster agency and communion in both past and future chapters may be an important part of recovering from schizophrenia and depression.
Key Words: Transdiagnostic markers of psychopathology, identity disturbance, schizophrenia, depression, narrative identity, recovery
... such as later in the day, tomorrow, next week (Baumeister et al. 2015). It seems that prospection uses the same core brain network of remembering the past, imagining the viewpoint of others and navigating (Klein 2013;Schacter et al. 2012;Buckner and Carrol 2007), and is associated with planning, episodic memory and default cognitive states (Buckner and Carrol 2007). Probably its prevalence is not incidental, and suggests that prospection may constitute a relevant strategy to Subjective perception forms the lenses through which we relate to the future: the next pages will try to observe and describe its implications for anticipation. ...
... highlight the similarities between the cognitive processes involved in simulating possible futures and remembering the past(Klein 2013, Schacter et al. 2012, Schacter and Madore 2016, such as common contextual and sensory characteristics(Szpunar and McDermott 2008), reflection on personal concerns(Rathbone et al 2011), similar brain regions activation(Benoit and Schacter 2015, Buckner andCarroll 2007). For several researchers, these similarities are due to the fact that both thinking about experiences in the past and the future rely massively on episodic memory, a specific form of memory that gives us the ability to recollect personal experiences happened in particular places and moments(Tulving 2002, Schacter andMadore 2016). ...
This thesis seeks to analyse how we relate to the future in a complex and uncertain world, our attempts to predict it and what cognitive strategies may influence our judgment and decision. It will also try to develop a better understanding of what elements can help us to improve our prospection, both as individuals, in personal choices, and as a society, to plan and address our actions.
The first chapter will describe how the relationship between humans and the future has evolved in history. The second chapter will introduce some of the main concepts of futures studies, and the attempts to give a structure to the discipline. The third chapter gathers psychology contributions to future thinking, the proposed paradigm shift from the classic past perspective to a new approach that considers the future, and some of the mechanisms that deceive our perception of the future. The fourth chapter discusses how we deal with complexity and uncertainty, and examines the concept of Black Swan and the strategies to predict the future. Finally, the fifth chapter reflects on the previously mentioned aspects and underlines the role of present attitudes to improve prospection.
... On the contrary, work with semantic dementia patients considered that semantic memory is crucial to future-oriented MTT (Devitt, Addis, & Schacter, 2017;Irish, Addis, Hodges, & Piguet, 2012). Still other researchers stated that both the episodic component and the semantic component of memory are required to recall past scenarios and to construct new ones (Cheng, Werning, & Suddendorf, 2016;Klein, 2013;Kopelman, Wilson, & Baddeley, 1989). Considering these conflicting points of view, it would be important so study MTT in a condition, like aMCI, that present impairments in both episodic memory and semantic memory. ...
... However, although distinctive in nature, episodic memory is interwoven with semantic memory, during the encoding and retrieval of the information (Suddendorf, Addis, & Corballis, 2009;Tulving, 2002). In fact, semantic memory can be self-referential too, since a person uses specific types of self-knowledge to describe himself/herself in the past and in the future (Klein, 2013). This is the reason why some researchers considered that AMI creates an artificial framework to evaluate the two components of memory (Murphy, Toyer, Levine, & Moscovitch, 2008). ...
Introduction: Mental Time Travel (MTT) is the people’s ability to remember themselves in the past and to imagine themselves in the future, and influence important life domains such as making decisions and planning future actions. It is widely recognized that patients with aMCI have deficits in episodic memory, but they also show impairments in semantic memory. It has been controversial whether MTT tasks are disturbed in aMCI mainly in relation to internal details related to episodic information, or external details, representing semantic and other extraneous information. The present study assessed whether patients with aMCI are affected in MTT regarding generation of internal details and external details, in past and future dimensions. Furthermore, it analyzed production in individual detail categories (internal: event details, thought/emotion, place, time, perceptual; external: extraneous events, semantic, other, repetitions).
Method: Twenty-nine patients with aMCI and 29 healthy controls underwent a MTT task based on an Autobiographical Interview, where they had to generate past and future events in response to cue words. Transcriptions were segmented and classified into internal detail categories and external detail categories, and composite scores were obtained.
Results: Patients with aMCI could globally produce significantly less details than controls. Similar to controls, patients with aMCI produced more internal details than external details, had more difficulty in generating details regarding the future as compared to the past, and scored higher in the detail categories event details and thought/emotion which represent internal detail types.
Conclusions: Patients with aMCI showed widespread deficits in MTT, presumably reflecting deficiencies in the complex and multiple cognitive abilities required for MTT tasks.
... Ingvar, 1979Ingvar, , 1985. Many have argued that the functional and evolutionary benefit of memories is that they allow preparation for the future (Klein, 2013;Michaelian, 2016;Suddendorf and Corballis, 2007;Tulving, 2005). One can either be guided by a particular memory of a situation, which get cued in certain settings, or one can simulate new events by combining elements of different memories. ...
... For example, chimpanzees and orangutans seem to remember specific events that took place three years ago given specific cues in the environment, and use those memories in a simple planning task involving tool-use (Martin-Ordas et al. 2013). The results strongly suggest that the memory is cued by a certain setup, which leads to an intentional action 'towards' the memory (Klein, 2013;Underwood et al. 2015). In our raven experiment (PAPER I), a similar cuing mechanism might have been in play, for example the presentation of the items on selection board might have constituted a cue that evoked a memory about a specific task. ...
... Routine engagement in these cognitive processes resulted in increased gray matter volume as well as functional changes in brain regions associated with higher level cognitive control (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex) and posterior brain regions among adults (85). Additionally, thinking about the future requires aspects of both episodic and semantic memory (86,87) in that imagination requires, to some degree, an extraction of stored information and recombination of that information in new ways, which may also promote neuroplasticity (88). Visualization (i.e., the generation of mental imagery) is a powerful technique associated with neuroplastic change (89) and can be a simple way to tap into the imaginary and, quite literally, "see" ideas of the future. ...
The radical imagination entails stepping outside the confines of the now and into the expansiveness of what could be . It has been described as the ability to dream of possible futures and bring these possibilities back to the present to drive social transformation. This perspective paper seeks to provide an overview of the radical imagination and its intersections with Afrofuturism, a framework and artistic epistemology that expresses the Black cultural experience through a space of hope where Blackness is integral. In this paper, I propose three processes that comprise the radical imagination: (1) imagining alternative Black futures, (2) radical hope, and (3) collective courage. I consider the neural networks that underlie each process and consider how the Black radical imagination is a portal through which aging Black adults experience hope and envision futures that drive social change. I conclude with considerations of what brain health and healing justice looks like for aging Black Americans— specifically, how invocation of the Black radical imagination may have positive brain health effects for a demographic group at increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
... The act of being reflexive involves remembering the past and thoroughly considering how it impacts our current and future selves. Research on remembering the past and linking it to the present and future experiences has increased dramatically over the last several years (Klein, 2013;Schacter et al., 2012;Szpunar, 2010). Although there can be concerns around memory and accuracy of events that happened in the far-off past, it is important to understand that memory is not a literal representation of the past. ...
One of the earliest attempts to Indigenize the Canadian curriculum began with Cultural Survival Schools (CSS). This grassroots approach to Indigenous education emerged in Canada in the mid 1970's. These schools were established in recognition that education is key to the survival of First Nations people. The CSS approach to education involved reaffirming Indigenous identity by selecting aspects of the traditional Indigenous ways and blending them with non-Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Despite various efforts to meet the learning needs of Indigenous youth over the years, significant problems are still present. In the wake of the report released by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 2015, the concept of cultural safety has become a major focus of the institutional justice and oppression conversation when considering K-12 education for Indigenous learners in Canada. As placing "culture" at the forefront of the education experience was the primary goal of CSS, and thus focusing on "cultural safety", perhaps it is time to look back at past practices and re-implement these educational approaches. This study offered an opportunity to ask alumni who had attended a CSS to reflect on, and speak more formally of, their experiences in mainstream schools and a CSS, 30 to 40 years after they graduated. The findings of this study support the results from research conducted around the world. However, what is notable about this study is that the participants were able to share how the positive experiences of attending a CSS persisted over time.
... The act of being reflexive involves remembering the past and thoroughly considering how it impacts our current and future selves. Research on remembering the past and linking it to the present and future experiences has increased dramatically over the last several years (Klein, 2013;Schacter et al., 2012;Szpunar, 2010). Although there can be concerns around memory and accuracy of events that happened in the far-off past, it is important to understand that memory is not a literal representation of the past. ...
One of the earliest attempts to Indigenize the Canadian curriculum began with Cultural Survival Schools (CSS). This grassroots approach to Indigenous education emerged in Canada in the mid 1970's. These schools were established in recognition that education is key to the survival of First Nations people. The CSS approach to education involved reaffirming Indigenous identity by selecting aspects of the traditional Indigenous ways and blending them with non-Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Despite various efforts to meet the learning needs of Indigenous youth over the years, significant problems are still present. In the wake of the report released by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 2015, the concept of cultural safety has become a major focus of the institutional justice and oppression conversation when considering K-12 education for Indigenous learners in Canada. As placing "culture" at the forefront of the education experience was the primary goal of CSS, and thus focusing on "cultural safety", perhaps it is time to look back at past practices and re-implement these educational approaches. This study offered an opportunity to ask alumni who had attended a CSS to reflect on, and speak more formally of, their experiences in mainstream schools and a CSS, 30 to 40 years after they graduated. The findings of this study support the results from research conducted around the world. However, what is notable about this study is that the participants were able to share how the positive experiences of attending a CSS persisted over time.
... Episodic memory is vital for episodic imaginations, in other words, cognitive migration. The information required to construct future event portrayals originate from a variety of sources, including episodic memory (Schacter & Addis, 2007;Suddendorf & Corballis, 2007) and semantic knowledge (Klein, 2013;Szpunar, 2010). ...
The migration phenomenon, in which the mind travels ahead of the body, especially
among would-be travellers, has received scholarly attention within migration studies.
Research in this area has not unpacked the cognitive migration experiences of those who
have already moved. This autoethnographic article explores the feelings, thoughts and
experiences of an individual living abroad in the United Kingdom but cognitively imprisoned
at his ancestral home in Igbo land. It draws on the concept of cognitive migration
and the author’s own experiences and feelings to introduce and explain the phenomenon
of cognitive immobility, which exemplifies the dialectical conflict between the aspirations
of longing for and emotions of belonging to a place against a simultaneous desire to remain
distant from it. This article advocates the recognition of this cognitive experience of being
trapped in place while mobilised in-person elsewhere in migration studies, providing a
lens to view such experiences that have erstwhile received inadequate attention. This
article contributes to the growing body of knowledge in relation to cognitive migration
processes and experiences of those contemplating or participating in human mobility.
... Episodic memory depends on flexible constructive processes. These constructive processes are considered to be 'adaptive' because they have been shown to support other critical cognitive functions, such as episodic simulation (i.e., the ability to imagine novel and specific future episodes; for reviews, see Klein, 2013;Schacter, 2012;Schacter, Benoit, & Szpunar, 2017;Szpunar, 2010). The constructive episodic simulation hypothesis states that episodic simulation draws on the same neurocognitive processes that support episodic memory (i.e., the retrieval and flexible recombination of episodic details; Schacter & Addis, 2007. ...
Episodic retrieval plays a functional-adaptive role in supporting divergent thinking, the ability to creatively combine different pieces of information. However, the same constructive memory process that provides a functional-adaptive benefit can also leave memory prone to error. In two experiments, we employed an individual differences approach to examine the relationship between different forms of creative thinking (divergent and convergent thinking) and false memory generation in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. In Experiment 1, and replicating prior findings, false recognition was significantly predicted by convergent thinking performance. Critically, we also observed a novel predictive relationship between false recognition and quantitative metrics of divergent thinking performance. In Experiment 2, these findings were replicated and we further showed that false recall was predicted by quantitative metrics of divergent thinking. Our findings suggest that constructive memory processes link creative thinking with the production of memory errors.
... As an extension of our previous findings, this systematic discounting was observed at the group level and with a larger group of patients than previously described by Kwan et al. (2013). MTL patients also show the certainty and common ratio effects (i.e., the Allais paradox; Craver et al., 2014) benchmark characteristics of risky choice that have been attributed to anticipated regret (Bell, 1982; see also Klein, 2013). ...
If the tendency to discount rewards reflects individuals' general level of impulsiveness, then the discounting of delayed and probabilistic rewards should be negatively correlated: The less a person is able to wait for delayed rewards, the more they should take chances on receiving probabilistic rewards. It has been suggested that damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC) increases individuals' impulsiveness, but both intertemporal choice and risky choice have only recently been assayed in the same patients with vMPFC damage. Here, we assess both delay and probability discounting in individuals with vMPFC damage (n = 8) or with medial temporal lobe (MTL) damage (n = 10), and in age- and education-matched controls (n = 30). On average, MTL-lesioned individuals discounted delayed rewards at normal rates but discounted probabilistic rewards more shallowly than controls. In contrast, vMPFC-lesioned individuals discounted delayed rewards more steeply but probabilistic rewards more shallowly than controls. These results suggest that vMPFC lesions affect the weighting of reward amount relative to delay and certainty in opposite ways. Moreover, whereas MTL-lesioned individuals and controls showed typical, nonsignificant correlations between the discounting of delayed and probabilistic rewards, vMPFC-lesioned individuals showed a significant negative correlation, as would be expected if vMPFC damage increases impulsiveness more in some patients than in others. Although these results are consistent with the hypothesis that vMPFC plays a role in impulsiveness, it is unclear how they could be explained by a single mechanism governing valuation of both delayed and probabilistic rewards.
... One of the most influential concepts of the nature of this phenomenology refers to autonoetic consciousness. It is the idea that episodic memory involves mental time travel located at a subjective time other than the present and accompanied by the first-person perspective (Klein 2013a(Klein , 2013cMichaelian 2016;Schacter, Addis, and Buckner 2007;Suddendorf and Corballis 2007). ...
There has been a growing interest in research concerning memory modification technologies (MMTs) in recent years. Neuroscientists and psychologists are beginning to explore the prospect of controllable and intentional modification of human memory. One of the technologies with the greatest potential to this end is optogenetics-an invasive neuromodula-tion technique involving the use of light to control the activity of individual brain cells. It has recently shown the potential to modify specific long-term memories in animal models in ways not yet possible with other MMTs. As the therapeutic potential of optogenetics has already prompted approval of the first human trials, it is especially important and timely to consider the opportunities and dangers this technology may entail. In this article, we focus on possible consequences of optogenetics as an MMT by analyzing fundamental threats potentially associated with memory modifications: the potential disruption of personality and authenticity.
... Many studies which examined the role of EM on EFT have supported this theory (i.e., Brown et al., 2013;El Haj et al., 2015;Gamboz et al., 2010;Hassabis et al., 2007;Race et al., 2011). Neuroimaging studies also revealed increased activity in medial temporal lobe (MTL), medial prefrontal cortex, frontopolar areas, inferior parietal regions, middle and superior temporal gyrus, and hippocampus during both future and past related processes Klein, 2013;Mullally & Maguire, 2014;Okuda et al., 2003;Schacter et al., 2012;Weiler et al., 2010). ...
Episodic future thinking (EFT) refers to mental simulation of possible future events, a process that mostly depends on episodic memory (EM). EFT impairment in schizophrenia was proposed to disturb continuity in self-functioning. Schizophrenia patients are also impaired in EM as well as executive functions (EFs). In the present study, we aimed to clarify the relationship between EFT and memory functions in schizophrenia by assessing (a) whether a group of individuals with schizophrenia (schizophrenia group [SG]) who have relatively intact long-term memory functions differ from healthy controls (control group [CG]) in terms of EFT performance, and (b) whether such difference is biologically represented in terms of cortical activity. We also aimed to clarify the role of EFs in EFT in 3 task conditions: past remembering with a single cue (PR), future imagination with a single cue (FI-1C), and future imagination with 3 given cues (FI-3C). Cortical activity was monitored by functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Although the two groups showed a comparable performance in the PR, the SG performed worse than the CG in the two future-imagination conditions. In the CG, mental flexibility predicted EFT, and EM predicted PR. No such relationship was observed in the SG. In the CG only, activity was higher in the FI-1C than the PR in the middle and superior temporal cortices. In the SG, activity in the rostral prefrontal cortex (rPFC) was negatively correlated with performance in FI-3C. These results suggest that EFT is still observed but not associated with EFs in individuals with schizophrenia having relatively intact memory functions. Altered activity in the rPFC may be associated with EFT impairment in schizophrenia.
... Remembering past experiences informs our planning for future contingencies (Klein, 2013). Telling stories about meaningful events in our lives can foster optimism, but the route from memory to optimism depends on the thematic content of the memory shared. ...
... Many studies which examined the role of EM on EFT have supported this theory (i.e., Brown et al., 2013;El Haj et al., 2015;Gamboz et al., 2010;Hassabis et al., 2007;Race et al., 2011). Neuroimaging studies also revealed increased activity in medial temporal lobe (MTL), medial prefrontal cortex, frontopolar areas, inferior parietal regions, middle and superior temporal gyrus, and hippocampus during both future and past related processes Klein, 2013;Mullally & Maguire, 2014;Okuda et al., 2003;Schacter et al., 2012;Weiler et al., 2010). ...
... Our ability to construct and simultaneously form the identification with the protagonist of an episodic simulation can be found in the process of "self-projection" (Buckner and Carroll 2007;Klein 2013Klein , 2015a. Self-projection refers to shifting "perspective from the immediate present to alternative perspectives" (Buckner and Carroll 2007, p. 49). ...
Every episodic memory entails a sense of identity, which allows us to mentally travel through time. There is a special way by which the subject who is remembering comes into contact with the self that is embedded in the episodic simulation of memory: we can directly and robustly experience the protagonist in memory as ourselves. This paper explores what constitutes such experience in memory. On the face of it, the issue may seem trivial: of course, we are able to entertain a sense of identity—the experience of our recollection structurally resembles our perception of the original event. However, given the phenomenon of observer memory, in which our visual perspective is decoupled from our embodied dimension, it is unclear whether it is the observing or the embodied one that is identified. This phenomenon is important not only in illustrating the complexity of identification but also in assessing how best to address it. In this paper, the issue is analyzed through concepts introduced from the literature on bodily self-consciousness. The potential approaches to addressing the issue of identification are examined, including the inheritance view, according to which the identification relies on the inheritance of mnemonic content from the original experience. I propose and argue for the self-simulation view, which suggests that what results in the experience of “I am this” in memory is the observing and the embodied dimensions as well as the relation between them, which enable different ways of projecting oneself into an episodic simulation.
... For example, the well-established constructive episodic simulation hypothesis delineates how both episodic memory and future thinking use the same re/constructive processes, but also how episodic future thoughts can be simulated by additional extraction and integration of autobiographical details (i.e., people, places and objects) from long term memory to arrive at a novel representation of a future event (Schacter & Addis, 2007). Undoubtedly, implementation of standardised instructions across studies has led to a set of convergent and reliable findings and principles, which has been widely beneficial to the field, leading to its popularity and many breakthroughs (see Klein, 2013;Schacter et al., 2012 for reviews). However, the use of certain paradigms which are ideally designed and suited to elicit deliberate constructive processes (what we term 'the standard approach') can give rise to the idea that future thinking is by its nature, a constructive process (e.g., Hassabis & Maguire, 2007;Schacter & Addis, 2007;Suddendorf & Corballis, 2007). ...
In this article, we address an apparent paradox in the literature on mental time travel and mind-wandering: How is it possible that future thinking is both constructive, yet often experienced as occurring spontaneously? We identify and describe two ‘routes’ whereby episodic future thoughts are brought to consciousness, with each of the ‘routes’ being associated with separable cognitive processes and functions. Voluntary future thinking relies on controlled, deliberate and slow cognitive processing. The other, termed involuntary or spontaneous future thinking, relies on automatic processes that allows ‘fully-fledged’ episodic future thoughts to freely come to mind, often triggered by internal or external cues. To unravel the paradox, we propose that the majority of spontaneous future thoughts are ‘pre-made’ (i.e., each spontaneous future thought is a re-iteration of a previously constructed future event), and therefore based on simple, well-understood, memory processes. We also propose that the pre-made hypothesis explains why spontaneous future thoughts occur rapidly, are similar to involuntary memories, and predominantly about upcoming tasks and goals. We also raise the possibility that spontaneous future thinking is the default mode of imagining the future. This dual process approach complements and extends standard theoretical approaches that emphasise constructive simulation, and outlines novel opportunities for researchers examining voluntary and spontaneous forms of future thinking.
... While Pillemer and others theoretically postulated this function of remembering our personal past, the overlap between the two timeframes has now been demonstrated in the brain. Areas of brain activation are highly similar when one remembers the past as when they consider the future (for a review, see Klein, 2013). This basic link between thinking about our past and future raises the question of whether this is indeed the earliest, most primary, function served by remembering the past events of our lives. ...
From an ecological perspective, understanding the form, the structure, of autobiographical memory requires examining the functions it serves in human life. The chapter begins with a review of the distant and then the more recent history of the functional perspective on autobiographical memory. That done, the bulk of the chapter addresses current controversies that arise when taking a functional approach. These include: (1) defining basic functions versus reasons for, or uses of, remembering, (2) considering whether there is one fundamental function, and, in contrast, (3) identifying possible candidates above and beyond the three broad functions commonly seen in the literature (i.e., self, social, directive). The functional approach to autobiographical memory continues to provide an important alternative, or complement, to mechanistic views of human remembering.
... We mentally construct our own futures using both episodic and semantic memories, an ability that confers a tremendous adaptive advantage, particularly by strengthening our decisionmaking capabilities (Suddendorf and Corballis, 1997;Addis et al., 2007;Klein, 2013). Envisioning future episodes evidently makes it possible to alleviate delay discounting, the general tendency to prioritize immediate, smaller rewards over future, larger rewards (Daniel et al., 2015;Bulley et al., 2016;Stein et al., 2018). ...
Terrorism is a salient risk source in 21st century life and may deter tourists from visiting certain destinations. How people perceive the risk of a future terror attack abroad, and thus their traveling decisions, may be influenced by whether they think about the future in specific and personal terms (episodic future thinking) or in more general, abstract terms (semantic future thinking). In a pre-registered experiment (N = 277) we explored the potential impact of episodic future thinking on the perceived risk of terror attacks abroad. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (1) An episodic future thinking-condition, where participants were asked to imagine a specific, terror-related personal episode that might occur in the future while traveling abroad; (2) a semantic future thinking-condition, where participants were asked to think more abstractly about terror events that might occur in the future; (3) an episodic counterfactual thinking-condition, where participants were asked to imagine a specific, terror-related personal episode that might have occurred in the past while traveling abroad and (4) a passive control condition. Participants indicated their perceived risk of six different future terror attacks occurring abroad. The manipulation checks suggest that the experimental manipulations functioned as intended. Contrary to the central hypothesis of the study, there were no differences in the perceived risk of terror attacks between the conditions. These results run counter to previous research and do not support the idea that how people think about the future influences their perceived risk of future dramatic events. Potential limitations and implications are discussed.
... For further insights, we may look to different, but related, research areas, which have nonetheless examined forms of spontaneous future cognition. For example, the study of spontaneous future thought has also been embedded in research and theories of prospective memory, even if methods often do not permit evaluation of the 'episodic nature' and mental time travel aspect of the future thoughts (Klein, 2013;Tulving, 2002). In the field of prospective memory, researchers study the ability to remember to carry out an action in response to a specific event or time in the future (e.g., passing on a message to colleagues at the next meeting or phoning a friend at 7 p.m. tomorrow) (Kvavilashvili & Ellis, 2004;McDaniel & Einstein, 2007). ...
In this Editorial, we discuss the past, present and future of an emerging and fast-developing field—spontaneous future cognition. In tracking the past of this research, the trajectories of research on mind-wandering, episodic future thinking and prospective memory are briefly examined, and their relation with spontaneous future cognition demarcated. Three broad methodological approaches (questionnaire, naturalistic and laboratory) used to study spontaneous future thoughts are described, providing an overview of the field. The present state of this research is represented by a themed analysis of the articles included in this Special Issue. The breadth of studies (covering cognitive mechanisms, developmental stages and psychopathology) have already led to important insights, especially concerning the conditions in which spontaneous future thoughts most commonly arise and who may be predisposed to experiencing them. In the future, greater effort should focus on developing a theoretical account of spontaneous future cognition—this may increase our understanding of how and why spontaneous future thoughts occur. If future research in this area reflects the diversity and depth within this Special Issue, a flourishing of research on spontaneous future cognition will be on the horizon in years or perhaps decades to come.
... Although these data suggest an important role for episodic specificity in emotion regulation toward worrisome future experiences in older adults, we are not claiming that episodic memory is the only form of memory that is involved in future-oriented problem solving. Existing research has highlighted the role of semantic memory in organizing various kinds of future thinking (Demblon & D'Argembeau, 2014;D'Argembeau & Demblon, 2012;Irish & Piguet, 2013;Klein, 2013;Szpunar et al., 2014). Further, reports of general improvements in emotion regulation with age (Scheibe & Carstensen, 2010;Urry & Gross, 2010), despite known declines in the specificity of memory and imagination (Schacter et al., 2018, hint that there are other factors at play that likely influence emotional responses toward negative or stressful events. ...
Interventions that increase the specificity of episodic memory and future-oriented problem solving have been shown to help both young adults and clinical populations regulate their emotions toward potential stressors. However, little is known about how episodic specificity impacts anxiety levels in older adults, who show reduced specificity of episodic memory, future simulation, and problem-solving performance. Although emotion regulation generally improves with age, older adults still experience worries pertaining to their health and interpersonal relationships. The current studies test how episodic specificity affects emotion regulation in older adults. In Experiment 1, participants received an episodic specificity induction (ESI)-brief training in recollecting details of past experiences-prior to generating steps to solve worrisome problems. Older adults provided more relevant steps and episodic details after the specificity induction relative to a control induction, but we found no difference in emotion regulation ratings between induction conditions. In Experiment 2, we contrasted performance on a personal problem-solving task (i.e., generating steps to solve one's own problems) intended to draw on episodic retrieval with an advice task focused on semantic processing (i.e., listing general advice for an acquaintance worried about similar problems). Participants provided more relevant steps and episodic details in the personal problem-solving task relative to the advice task, and boosts in detail were related to larger reductions in anxiety toward the target worrisome events. These results indicate that solving worrisome problems with greater levels of episodic detail can positively influence emotion regulation in older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
... Second, although initially this new work on future imagining felt theoretically disconnected from my earlier work, as we moved forward with it I began to see that this work might be related in an important way to a key question raised by my earlier theorizing about adaptive aspects of the seven sins of memory: What are the functions of a constructive memory? There were several kinds of evidence suggesting a tight linkage between episodic memory and future imagining, including the above-noted neuroimaging evidence, Tulving's (1985) observations concerning patient KC, and other related observations (for reviews, see Klein, 2013;Mullally & Maguire, 2014;Schacter et al., 2008Schacter et al., , 2012Schacter, Benoit, & Szpunar, 2017;Szpunar, 2010). Adopting a functional perspective, Addis (2007a, 2007b) hypothesized that episodic memory enables past experiences to be used flexibly to imagine novel future scenarios by allowing us to recombine bits and pieces of past experiences into simulations of novel situations that might occur in the future. ...
In this article I discuss some of the major questions, findings, and ideas that have driven my research program, which has examined various aspects of human memory using a combination of cognitive, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging approaches. I do so from a career perspective that describes important scientific influences that have shaped my approach to the study of memory and discusses considerations that led to choosing specific research paths. After acknowledging key early influences, I briefly summarize a few of the main takeaways from research on implicit memory during the 1980s and 1990s and then move on to consider more recent ideas and findings concerning constructive memory, future imagining, and mental simulation that have motivated my approach for the past 2 decades. A main unifying theme of this research is that memory can affect psychological functions in ways that go beyond the simple everyday understanding of memory as a means of revisiting past experiences.
... However, memories are (by definition) limited to accessible retrievals-given the theoretical (Beck, 1967) and empirical (Bradley et al., 1995;Gupta & Kar, 2012 memory biases seen in depression, imagery techniques may focus instead on a future orientation. Klein (2013) has additionally theorized that future-oriented imagery is straightforward even when individuals have no episodic memory of a situation. Other work has also shown that simulating positive future events in a single session can increase depressed participants' ratings of the likelihood and importance of other future events (Boland et al., 2017). ...
Depressed adults often show a bias towards negative self-referent processing at the expense of positive self-referent processing. The current study assessed whether a mental imagery intervention (Positive Self Reference Training—PSRT) delivered via the Internet could improve self-referent processing and depressive symptomatology among adults with moderate or greater depression symptoms. Participants were recruited via online methods and randomly assigned to one of two computerized interventions: active PSRT (n=44) or control training (NTC; n=43). The PSRT involved visualizing the self in response to different positive cues (e.g., an achievement) every other day for two weeks. The NTC provided neutral cues about objects. Self-referential processing of positive and negative adjectives and depression symptoms were measured at baseline, one week, and two weeks after initiating training. Over those two weeks, PSRT participants showed a greater increase in positive self-referent processing than did NTC participants. Negative self-referent processing and symptoms of depression declined comparably in both groups. Similarly, for both groups, increase in positive and decrease in negative self-referent processing was associated with a greater reduction in depression. These results indicate that mental imagery has the potential to improve self-referential processing, especially for positive stimuli, which may, in turn, help reduce depressive symptomatology.
... This observation is further qualified by voxel-based morphometry findings demonstrating an exclusive association between atrophy in core semantic-processing regions of the brain and future thinking deficits in semantic dementia (Irish, Addis, et al., 2012a). The finding that semantic memory is essential for constructive simulation of the future represents an expansion of the prevailing view in the field, which to date has focused mainly on the role of episodic memory (Klein, 2013). As such, we have formulated the semantic scaffolding hypothesis (Irish, 2016; in which semantic memory is argued to provide the critical framework to impart meaning and structure to constructive simulation. ...
The capacity to engage in spontaneous self- generated thought is fundamental to the human experience, yet surprisingly little is known regarding the neurocognitive mechanisms that support this complex ability. Dementia syndromes offer a unique opportunity to study how the breakdown of large- scale functional brain networks impacts spontaneous cognition. Indeed, many of the characteristic cognitive changes in dementia reflect the breakdown of foundational processes essential for discrete aspects of self- generated thought. This chapter discusses how disease- specific alterations in memory- based/ construction and mentalizing processes likely disrupt specific aspects of spontaneous, self- generated thought. In doing so, it provides a comprehensive overview of the neurocognitive architecture of spontaneous cognition, paying specific attention to how this sophisticated endeavor is compromised in dementia.
... Other research has, however, used tasks probing semantic representations, to evaluate whether semantic memory is essential for imagining of the future. These research studies have provided an expansion to the prevailing view to which the role of episodic memory has focused primarily on (Klein, 2013) leading to the semantic scaffolding hypothesis (Irish and Piguet, 2013). According to this hypothesis, semantic representations support the construction of novel events as these representations provide undifferentiated conceptual information that can be harnessed and generalized to many different contexts. ...
Future episodic thinking refers to the ability to imagine oneself in the future and project oneself into specific future events. This cognitive process is related to decision making and planning for the future. Although healthy populations commonly project themselves into the future (e.g. while planning a trip or career), patients with mood disorders show impairment in this ability. In this review article, we discuss the similarities and differences in future thinking among the following populations: major depressive disorder, dysphoria, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Importantly, we highlight the methodological variations in future episodic memory tasks in the literature that may explain the differences in the existing results.
... Remembering past experiences informs our planning for future contingencies (Klein, 2013). Telling stories about meaningful events in our lives can foster optimism, but the route from memory to optimism depends on the thematic content of the memory shared. ...
For millennia, narratives have been a primary mode of oral discourse. Narrative presentation of information has been shown to facilitate interpersonal and group communication. However, research indicates that narratives are more than merely an adaptive mode of communication. Narrative is a fundamental – and perhaps foundational – element of social and cultural life. The present article posits that the centrality of narrative in social life is due to narrative’s ability to help satisfy the five core social motives, as identified by Fiske belonging, understanding, control, self-enhancement, and trust. In so doing, this article reviews empirical and theoretical work examining basic narrative processes, autobiographical narratives, and entertainment narrative consumption to illustrate how narrative thought helps to satisfies core human motives and in turn, how the narrative construction process informs self and identity formation.
... An important next step will be to validate our approach in relation to episodic future thinking, a capacity proposed to hinge upon integrity of the episodic memory system (Schacter, Addis, & Buckner, 2007). In this regard, findings of significant semantic contributions to future thinking are of utmost interest (e.g., Irish et al., 2012a;Klein, 2013) as empirical studies conceptualizing future-oriented mental time travel in terms of an episodic-semantic continuum are lacking (see Irish, 2016). We suggest that our NExt scoring system offers a simple, yet theoretically grounded, framework to refine the understanding of the external components contained within various narrative types, across an array of clinical populations, temporal contexts, and experimental paradigms. ...
Autobiographical memory (ABM) is typically held to comprise episodic and semantic elements, with the vast majority of studies to date focusing on profiles of episodic details in health and disease. In this context, ‘non‐episodic’ elements are often considered to reflect semantic processing or are discounted from analyses entirely. Mounting evidence suggests that rather than reflecting one unitary entity, semantic autobiographical information may contain discrete subcomponents, which vary in their relative degree of semantic or episodic content. This study aimed to (1) review the existing literature to formally characterize the variability in analysis of ‘non‐episodic’ content (i.e., external details) on the Autobiographical Interview and (2) use these findings to create a theoretically grounded framework for coding external details. Our review exposed discrepancies in the reporting and interpretation of external details across studies, reinforcing the need for a new, consistent approach. We validated our new external details scoring protocol (the ‘NExt’ taxonomy) in patients with Alzheimer's disease (n = 18) and semantic dementia (n = 13), and 20 healthy older Control participants and compared profiles of the NExt subcategories across groups and time periods. Our results revealed increased sensitivity of the NExt taxonomy in discriminating between ABM profiles of patient groups, when compared to traditionally used internal and external detail metrics. Further, remote and recent autobiographical memories displayed distinct compositions of the NExt detail types. This study is the first to provide a fine‐grained and comprehensive taxonomy to parse external details into intuitive subcategories and to validate this protocol in neurodegenerative disorders.
... Educators are still using fact-dense curricular materials that engage students' semantic memories almost exclusively. It should be noted, however, that evidence is beginning to emerge that episodic and semantic memories are interdependent (Klein 2013;Klein et al. 2002), an idea that was first proposed by Tulving (1982), and substantiated by Kintsch (1986) in his classroom investigations of word problems in arithmetic. Greenberg and Verfaellie (2010) reviewed the results from the cognitive neuropsychology literature that examined patients with episodic memory impairments, and found that: ...
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States 2013) mandates that schools provide students an understanding of the skills and knowledge that scientists use to engage in scientific practices. In this article, I argue that one of the best ways to accomplish this goal is to have students take the perspective of the scientist by reading nonfiction narratives written by scientists and science writers. I explore the anthropological and neurological evidence that suggests that perspective-taking is an essential component in the learning process. It has been shown that by around age 4, the human child begins to be able to take the perspective of others—a process that neuroscientists have shown engages episodic memory, a memory type that some neurocognitive scientists believe is central in organizing human cognition. Neuroscientists have shown that the brain regions in which episodic memory resides undergo pronounced anatomical changes during adolescence, suggesting that perspective-taking assumes an even greater role in cognition during adolescence and young adulthood. Moreover, I argue that the practice of science itself is narrative in nature. With each new observation and experiment, the scientist is acting to reveal an emerging story. It is the story-like nature of science that motivates the scientist to push onward with new experiments and new observations. It is also the story-like nature of the practice of science that can potentially engage the student. The classroom studies that I review here confirm the power of the narrative in increasing students’ understanding of science.
... The process of "scene construction" has been suggested as a key component of MTT, allowing the retrieval of relevant elements from memory and their subsequent binding into a coherent spatial scene (Hassabis et al., 2007a;Maguire and Mullally, 2013). Another process suggested as a fundamental aspect of MTT is self-projection in time, namely the ability to disengage from the immediate environment and mentally "project" oneself to a new "self-location" in time, either in the past or in the future (Buckner and Carroll, 2007;Arzy et al., 2008;Nyberg et al., 2010;Markowitsch and Staniloiu, 2011;Klein, 2013;Kurczek et al., 2015). It is from this "self-location" in time that the individual re-orients herself with respect to different events, in past or future (Arzy et al., 2009a;Peer et al., 2015). ...
In mental time travel (MTT) one is “traveling” back-and-forth in time, remembering and imagining events. Despite intensive research regarding memory processes in the hippocampus, it was only recently shown that the hippocampus plays an essential role in encoding the temporal order of events remembered, and therefore plays an important role in MTT. Does it also encode the temporal relations of these events to the remembering self? We asked patients undergoing pre-surgical evaluation with depth electrodes penetrating the temporal lobes bilaterally towards the hippocampus to project themselves in time to a past, future or present time-point, and then make judgments regarding various events. Classification analysis of intracranial evoked potentials revealed clear temporal dissociation in the left hemisphere between lateral-temporal electrodes, activated at ~100-300 ms, and hippocampal electrodes, activated at ~400-600 ms. This dissociation may suggest a division of labor in the temporal lobe during self-projection in time, hinting towards the different roles of the lateral-temporal cortex and the hippocampus in MTT and the temporal organization of the related events with respect to the experiencing self.
... It is important to note that we do not wish to imply that episodic memory is the only form of memory that is involved in generating alternative future outcomes. Previous research has highlighted the role of semantic memory in organizing various kinds of future thinking (cf., Demblon & D'Argembeau, 2014;D'Argembeau & Demblon, 2012;Irish & Piguet, 2013;Klein, 2013;Szpunar et al., 2014), and an important direction for future research will be to examine how semantic memory impacts the generation of alternative future outcomes. Nonetheless, the present research provides clear evidence of a role for episodic memory. ...
A critical adaptive feature of future thinking involves the ability to generate alternative versions of possible future events. However, little is known about the nature of the processes that support this ability. Here we examined whether an episodic specificity induction - brief training in recollecting details of a recent experience that selectively impacts tasks that draw on episodic retrieval - (1) boosts alternative event generation and (2) changes one's initial perceptions of negative future events. In Experiment 1, an episodic specificity induction significantly increased the number of alternative positive outcomes that participants generated to a series of standardized negative events, compared with a control induction not focused on episodic specificity. We also observed larger decreases in the perceived plausibility and negativity of the original events in the specificity condition, where participants generated more alternative outcomes, relative to the control condition. In Experiment 2, we replicated and extended these findings using a series of personalized negative events. Our findings support the idea that episodic memory processes are involved in generating alternative outcomes to anticipated future events, and that boosting the number of alternative outcomes is related to subsequent changes in the perceived plausibility and valence of the original events, which may have implications for psychological well-being.
... In concordance with these findings, and concerning the mental time travel of life goals, better control and probability realization were reported for recent than more temporarily distant goals. It was also easier for participants to pre-experience and mentally travel to more, rather than less, probable future-life goals, indicating that episodic future thinking of near-future personal goals is easier to cognitively structure, represent, and imagine, as well as estimate as more probable outcomes, than personal goals in the more distant future (see Atance & O'Neill, 2001; but also see Klein, 2013 for review and discussion about the relations between the mental time-travel phenomenon and the memory systems involved). In addition, older participants were shown to pre-experience future life goals more than younger ones, meaning that individuals going through entering as opposed to emerging adulthood are more involved in mental monitoring of their personal future. ...
The aim of this study was to investigate effects of gender and age in emerging (M = 22 years of age) versus entering (M = 28 years of age) adulthood on participants’ ratings of life goals, self-defining life-goal memories, and goal-related mental time travel, as well as the relations within the goal category (i.e., home, work/education, money, social life, close relationships, health/fitness, and emotions/feelings). Life goals in the present age cohort were predominantly about health/fitness, and the self-defining life-goal memories were mostly about emotions/feelings, close relationships, work/education, and social life containing mostly the phenomenology of emotional intensity and coherence. Age effects on life-goal ratings and goal-related mental time travel showed that life goals and mental monitoring of personal future may vary across the psychosocial maturation periods of emerging and entering adulthood. No effects of gender were obtained, probably due to similar concerns shared by males and females in terms of goals and aspirations in the age cohort assessed.
The Galilean explanatory style is characterized by the search for the underlying structure of phenomena, the positing of "deep" explanatory principles, and a view of the relation between theory and data, on which the search for "crucial data" is of primary importance. In this paper, I trace the dynamics of adopting the Galilean style, focusing on the science of episodic memory. I argue that memory systems, such as episodic and semantic memory, were posited as underlying competences producing the observable phenomena of memory. Considered in idealized isolation from other systems, episodic memory was taken to underlay the ability of individuals to remember events from their personal past. Yet, in reality, memory systems regularly interact, standing in many-to-many relations to actual memory tasks and experiences. Upon this backdrop, I explore a puzzle about the increasing prominence of the notion of autonoetic consciousness in Tulving's theory of episodic memory. I argue that, contrary to widespread belief, the prominence is not best explained by the purported essential link between autonoetic consciousness and episodic memory. Rather, it is explained by the fact that autonoetic consciousness, hypothesized to uniquely accompany episodic retrieval, was considered a source of crucial data, predictable only from theories positing a functionally distinct episodic memory system. However, with the emergence of a new generation of theories, positing wider memory systems for remembering and imagination, the question of the relation between episodic memory and autonoetic consciousness has been reopened. This creates a pressing need for de-idealization, triggering a new search for crucial data.
Researchers have studied non-human primate cognition along different paths, including social cognition, planning and causal knowledge, spatial cognition and memory, and gestural communication, as well as comparative studies with humans. This volume describes how primate cognition is studied in labs, zoos, sanctuaries, and in the field, bringing together researchers examining similar issues in all of these settings and showing how each benefits from the others. Readers will discover how lab-based concepts play out in the real world of free primates. This book tackles pressing issues such as replicability, research ethics, and open science. With contributors from a broad range of comparative, cognitive, neuroscience, developmental, ecological, and ethological perspectives, the volume provides a state-of-the-art review pointing to new avenues for integrative research.
While virtual reality (VR) has been explored in the field of architecture, its implications on people who experience their future office space in such a way has not been extensively studied. In this explorative study, we are interested in how VR and other representation methods support users in projecting themselves into their future office space and how this might influence their willingness to relocate. In order to compare VR with other representations, we used (i) standard paper based floor plans and renders of the future building (as used by architects to present their creations to stakeholders), (ii) a highly-detailed virtual environment of the same building experienced on a computer monitor (desktop condition), and (iii) the same environment experienced on a head mounted display (VR condition). Participants were randomly assigned to conditions and were instructed to freely explore their representation method for up to 15 min without any restrictions or tasks given. The results show, that compared to other representation methods, VR significantly differed for the sense of presence, user experience and engagement, and that these measures are correlated for this condition only. In virtual environments, users were observed looking at the views through the windows, spent time on terraces between trees, explored the surroundings, and even “took a walk” to work. Nevertheless, the results show that representation method influences the exploration of the future building as users in VR spent significantly more time exploring the environment, and provided more positive comments about the building compared to users in either desktop or paper conditions. We show that VR representation used in our explorative study increased users’ capability to imagine future scenarios involving their future office spaces, better supported them in projecting themselves into these spaces, and positively affected their attitude towards relocating.
Comment la représentation de soi — et, plus précisément, d’un soi continu et identique à lui-même — advient-elle à la conscience, et par quels ressorts psychologiques y consentons-nous ? Voici la question qui est au centre de cette thèse, pour laquelle j’ai fait le choix d’une réponse d’inspiration humienne, que l’on pourrait qualifier de sentimentaliste. Celle-ci consiste à soutenir que la genèse et le maintien de la représentation de soi reposent d’abord et essentiellement sur des processus émotionnels. Je commence par montrer comment cette interrogation et cette approche émergent dans le Traité de la nature humaine, et, surtout, par m’opposer à l’interprétation qui fait de Hume un partisan de la théorie de l’absence de soi (no self theory). Dans cette perspective, je m’attache à réévaluer à la hausse sa théorie des passions, jugée désuète, à la lumière des théories récentes des émotions et, particulièrement, de celle qui soutient que les émotions consistent en des attitudes évaluatives. Je montre ainsi comment l’attention, la mémoire, l’anticipation et la raison participent à l’émergence et au maintien de la représentation de soi dans la conscience en vertu de mécanismes émotionnels. Enfin, je mets à l’épreuve mon hypothèse en la confrontant à son principal adversaire : le modèle intellectualiste tel qu’il a été développé par Thomas Metzinger, d’après lequel cette représentation résulte moins des émotions que de mécanismes de nature cognitive. Je soutiens alors que ce modèle lui-même présente deux limites qui obligent à reconsidérer la part des émotions dans la représentation de soi : d’une part, loin d’évacuer l’affectivité comme il le prétend, il suppose en réalité de lui accorder un rôle considérable ; d’autre part, contrairement à l’approche humienne, il ne parvient pas à rendre compte de cas pathologiques comme celui des sujets dépersonnalisés qui, manifestement, sont dépourvus de toute représentation de soi. Or l’analyse du trouble de la dépersonnalisation, en plus de donner les moyens de déterminer au moins indirectement quels processus mentaux conditionnent la représentation de soi, me permet de défendre une version forte de ma thèse (les émotions sont nécessaires et président à la genèse et au succès de la représentation de soi dans la conscience), et non simplement modérée (les émotions concourent, au même titre que la cognition, à cette représentation).
While traditional analyses of autobiographical construction tend to focus on the ‘internal’ or episodic details of the narrative, contemporary studies employing fine-grained scoring measures reveal the ‘external’ component to contain important information relevant to the individual’s life story. Here, we used the recently developed NExt scoring protocol to explore profiles of external details generated by patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) (n = 11) and semantic dementia (SD) (n = 13) on a future thinking task. Overall, distinct NExt profiles were observed for future events in AD and SD. Specifically, AD patients provided significantly more Specific Episode external details compared with Controls. Using voxel-based morphometry, these increased external details within future narratives related to grey matter intensity in medial and lateral frontal regions in AD. By contrast, SD patients displayed an elevation of Specific Episode, Extended Episode, and General Semantic details during future simulation relative to Controls, which related to grey matter intensity of medial and lateral parietal regions. Our findings suggest that the compensatory external details generated during future simulation comprise an array of episodic and semantic details that vary in terms of specificity and self-relevance, which may be differentially affected depending on the locus of underlying neuropathology in dementia. Adopting a fine-grained approach to external details helps to characterise the interplay between episodic and semantic content during future stimulation and suggests potentially differential vulnerability and preservation of distinct components of the constructed narrative in clinical disorders.
Episodic simulation is the construction of a mental representation of a specific autobiographical future event. Episodic simulation has increasingly been studied in psychiatric populations. Here we 1) review evidence indicating that episodic simulation is compromised in patients with depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and PTSD; and 2) consider several potential cognitive mechanisms of episodic simulation in psychiatric populations: episodic retrieval, scene construction, mental imagery, components of the CaRFAX model (i.e., capture and rumination, functional avoidance, and executive functioning), and narrative style. We evaluate evidence regarding these mechanisms across psychiatric populations, and identify areas of future research. Understanding the factors that contribute to episodic simulation impairment in psychiatric populations may lead to targeted and effective treatment approaches.
Mobility is integral to mankind, but current cognitive research on migrants is almost nonexistent. Most of the existing knowledge on human cognition is based on data collected from (and by) the wealthiest and least mobile citizens of the world. In turn, most of the migration literature relies on superficial, and at times erroneous, assumptions regarding the cognitive processes underlying migratory phenomenon. However, research conducted to date in reveals striking convergences between core issues relevant to scholars in cognitive science on the one hand, and in migration studies on the other. This current lack on cross‐disciplinary dialog has no scientific grounds for two fields, which are inherently interdisciplinary, and yet it has concerning sociopolitical implications. Mapping out a novel research agenda at the crossroads of the cognitive and social sciences, this article stands as an invitation for researchers to engage in further collaborative work involving joint data collections and joint data analyses. This paper argues that researching migrant cognition would give more breadth to cognitive science and more depth to migration studies, which has the potential to better inform the design of public policies. Though the examples of (a) visual perception, (b) future‐oriented cognition, and (c) language acquisition, this article shows that pairing the discoveries of migration scholars and cognitive scientists can move forward our understanding on the human mind, in an ever‐moving world.
This article is categorized under:
• Economics > Individual Decision‐Making
• Psychology > Theory and Methods
• Psychology > Comparative Psychology
• Psychology > Language
Abstract
Cognition & Migration.
The human imagination manifests in countless different forms. We imagine the possible and the impossible. How do we do this so effortlessly? Why did the capacity for imagination evolve and manifest with undeniably manifold complexity uniquely in human beings? This handbook reflects on such questions by collecting perspectives on imagination from leading experts. It showcases a rich and detailed analysis on how the imagination is understood across several disciplines of study, including anthropology, archaeology, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and the arts. An integrated theoretical-empirical-applied picture of the field is presented, which stands to inform researchers, students, and practitioners about the issues of relevance across the board when considering the imagination. With each chapter, the nature of human imagination is examined – what it entails, how it evolved, and why it singularly defines us as a species.
When making choices between smaller, sooner rewards and larger, later ones, people tend to discount future outcomes. Individual differences in temporal discounting in older adults have been associated with episodic memory abilities and entorhinal cortical thickness. The cause of this association between better memory and more future-oriented choice remains unclear, however. One possibility is that people with perceptually richer recollections are more patient because they also imagine the future more vividly. Alternatively, perhaps people whose memories focus more on the meaning of events (i.e., are more “gist-based”) show reduced temporal discounting, since imagining the future depends on interactions between semantic and episodic memory. We examined which categories of episodic details – perception-based or gist-based – are associated with temporal discounting in older adults. Older adults whose autobiographical memories were richer in perception-based details showed reduced temporal discounting. Furthermore, in an exploratory neuroanatomical analysis, both discount rates and perception-based details correlated with entorhinal cortical thickness. Retrieving autobiographical memories before choice did not affect temporal discounting, however, suggesting that activating episodic memory circuitry at the time of choice is insufficient to alter discounting in older adults. These findings elucidate the role of episodic memory in decision making, which will inform interventions to nudge intertemporal choices.
Kent Cochrane (K.C.) has been investigated by researchers for nearly three decades after intracranial trauma from a motorcycle accident at age 30 resulted in a striking profile of amnesia. K.C. suffered severe anterograde amnesia in both verbal and non-verbal domains which was accompanied by selective retrograde amnesia for personal events experienced prior to the time of his injury (episodic memory), with relative preservation of memory for personal and world facts (semantic memory), and of implicit memory. This pattern of spared and impaired memory extended to spatial memory for large-scale environments and beyond memory to future imagining and decision-making. Post-mortem brain findings at age 62 included moderate diffuse atrophy, left orbitofrontal contusion, left posterior cerebral artery infarct, and left anterior frontal watershed infarct. Notably, there was severe neuronal loss and gliosis of the hippocampi bilaterally. The left hippocampus was severely affected anteriorly and posteriorly, but CA2, CA4, and the dentate gyrus (DG) were focally spared. There was associated degeneration of the left fornix. The right hippocampus showed near complete destruction anteriorly, with relative preservation posteriorly, mainly of CA4 and DG. Bilateral parahippocampal gyri and left anterior thalamus also showed neuron loss and gliosis. There was no evidence of co-existing neurodegenerative phenomena on beta-amyloid, phosphorylated tau, or TDP-43 immunostaining. The extent of damage to medial temporal lobe structures is in keeping with K.C.'s profound anterograde and retrograde amnesia, with the exception of the unexpected finding of preserved CA2/CA4 and DG. K.C.'s case demonstrates that relatively clean functional dissociations are still possible following widespread brain damage, with structurally compromised brain regions unlikely to be critical to cognitive functions found to be intact. In this way, the findings presented here add to K.C.'s significant contributions to our understanding of clinical-anatomical relationships in memory.
Recent research showed that people recall past-oriented, evaluative feedback more fully and accurately than future-oriented, directive feedback. Here we investigated whether these memory biases arise from preferential attention toward evaluative feedback during encoding. We also attempted to counter the biases via manipulations intended to focus participants on improvement. Participants received bogus evaluative and directive feedback on their writing. Before reading the feedback, some participants set goals for improvement (experiments 1 and 2), or they wrote about their past or future use of the writing skills, and/or were incentivised to improve (experiment 3); we objectively measured participants’ attention during feedback reading using eyetracking. Finally, all participants completed a recall test. We successfully replicated the preferential remembering of evaluative feedback, but found little support for an attentional explanation. Goal-setting reduced participants’ tendency to reproduce feedback in an evaluative style, but not their preferential remembering of evaluative feedback. Neither orienting participants toward their past or future use of the writing skills, nor incentivising them to improve, influenced their attention toward or memory for the feedback. These findings advance the search for a mechanism to explain people's weaker memory for future-oriented feedback, demonstrating that attentional and improvement-oriented accounts cannot adequately explain the effect.
In this chapter we present an overview of emerging research on the cognitive and neural bases of episodic or future event simulation—imagining a specific experience in one's personal future—and its relation to memory. The review is presented from the perspective of providing a useful reference for those interested in developing their own work on the topic. In the context of discussing key findings, we focus on standard approaches to evoking future event simulations, methods for collecting and analyzing details associated with simulated events and for inferring their structure, and issues unique to studying the neural correlates of future event simulation. We conclude by considering broader issues for the study of simulation.
Episodic memory is the ability to revisit events in one's personal past, to relive them as if one travelled back in mental time. It has widely been assumed that such an ability imposes a metaphysical requirement on selves. Buddhist philosophers, however, deny the requirement and therefore seek to provide accounts of episodic memory that are metaphysically parsimonious. The idea that the memory perspective is a centred field of experience whose phenomenal constituents are simulacra of an earlier field of experience, yet attended to (organised, arranged) in a way that presents them as happening again, is, I suggest, a better one than that the memory perspective consists in taking as object-aspect the subject-aspect of the earlier experience, or the idea that it consists in labelling a representation of the earlier experience with an I-tag.
Ganeri's [2018] discussion of mental time travel and the self focuses on remembering the past, but has less to say with respect to the status of future-oriented mental time travel. This paper aims to disambiguate the relation between prospection and the self from the framework of Ganeri's interpretation of three Buddhist views—by Buddhaghosa, Vasubandhu, and Dignaga. Is the scope of Ganeri's discussion confined to the past, or is there a stronger assumption that future thought always entails self-representation? I argue that if mental time travel towards the past and towards the future are continuous, both past and future thought should be possible independently of self-representation. An assumption of discontinuity however would enable the employment of the self as one of the defining differences between remembering the past and imagining the future. The two options can be further contrasted on the basis of distinct ways of constructing past/future scenarios (field vs. observer perspective), modes of experiencing time (known vs. lived), and the origin of mental time travel (episodic vs. semantic memory). I further assess the compatibility of future-oriented thought with the three Buddhist views on the basis of these coordinates.
The experimental evidence on the interrelation between episodic memory and semantic memory is currently inconclusive. Are they independent systems, different aspects of a single system, or separate, but strongly interacting, systems? Here, we propose a computational role of the interaction between the semantic and episodic systems that might help resolve this debate. We hypothesize that episodic memories are represented as sequences of activation patterns. These patterns are the output of a semantic rep-resentational network that compresses the high-dimensional sensory input. We show quantitatively that the accuracy of episodic memory crucially depends on the quality of the semantic representation. We compare two types of semantic representations: appropriate representations, which means that the representation is used to store input sequences that are of the same type as those that it was trained on, and inappropriate representations, which means that stored inputs differ from the training data. Retrieval accuracy is higher for appropriate representations because the encoded sequences are less divergent than those encoded with inappropriate representations. Consistent with our model prediction, we found that human subjects remember some aspects of episodes significantly more accurately, if they had previously been familiarized with the objects occurring in the episode, as compared to episodes involving unfamiliar objects. We thus conclude that the interaction with the semantic system plays an important role for episodic memory.
People can time travel cognitively because they can remember events having occurred at particular times in the past (episodic memory) and because they can anticipate new events occurring at particular times in the future. The ability to assign points in time to events arises from human development of a sense of time and its accompanying time-keeping technology. The hypothesis is advanced that animals are cognitively stuck in time; that is, they have no sense of time and thus have no episodic memory or ability to anticipate long-range future events. Research on animals' abilities to detect time of day, track short time intervals, remember the order of a sequence of events, and anticipate future events are considered, and it is concluded that the stuck-in-time hypothesis is largely supported by the current evidence.
Semantic dementia is a progressive neurodegenerative condition characterized by the profound and amodal loss of semantic memory in the context of relatively preserved episodic memory. In contrast, patients with Alzheimer's disease typically display impairments in episodic memory, but with semantic deficits of a much lesser magnitude than in semantic dementia. Our understanding of episodic memory retrieval in these cohorts has greatly increased over the last decade, however, we know relatively little regarding the ability of these patients to imagine and describe possible future events, and whether episodic future thinking is mediated by divergent neural substrates contingent on dementia subtype. Here, we explored episodic future thinking in patients with semantic dementia (n = 11) and Alzheimer's disease (n = 11), in comparison with healthy control participants (n = 10). Participants completed a battery of tests designed to probe episodic and semantic thinking across past and future conditions, as well as standardized tests of episodic and semantic memory. Further, all participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging. Despite their relatively intact episodic retrieval for recent past events, the semantic dementia cohort showed significant impairments for episodic future thinking. In contrast, the group with Alzheimer's disease showed parallel deficits across past and future episodic conditions. Voxel-based morphometry analyses confirmed that atrophy in the left inferior temporal gyrus and bilateral temporal poles, regions strongly implicated in semantic memory, correlated significantly with deficits in episodic future thinking in semantic dementia. Conversely, episodic future thinking performance in Alzheimer's disease correlated with atrophy in regions associated with episodic memory, namely the posterior cingulate, parahippocampal gyrus and frontal pole. These distinct neuroanatomical substrates contingent on dementia group were further qualified by correlational analyses that confirmed the relation between semantic memory deficits and episodic future thinking in semantic dementia, in contrast with the role of episodic memory deficits and episodic future thinking in Alzheimer's disease. Our findings demonstrate that semantic knowledge is critical for the construction of novel future events, providing the necessary scaffolding into which episodic details can be integrated. Further research is necessary to elucidate the precise contribution of semantic memory to future thinking, and to explore how deficits in self-projection manifest on behavioural and social levels in different dementia subtypes.
This article contains the argument that the human ability to travel mentally in time constitutes a discontinuity between ourselves and other animals. Mental time travel comprises the mental reconstruction of personal events from the past (episodic memory) and the mental construction of possible events in the future. It is not an isolated module, but depends on the sophistication of other cognitive capacities, including self-awareness, meta-representation, mental attribution, understanding the perception-knowledge relationship, and the ability to dissociate imagined mental states from one's present mental state. These capacities are also important aspects of so-called theory of mind, and they appear to mature in children at around age 4. Furthermore, mental time travel is generative, involving the combination and recombination of familiar elements, and in this respect may have been a precursor to language. Current evidence, although indirect or based on anecdote rather than on systematic study, suggests that nonhuman animals, including the great apes, are confined to a "present" that is limited by their current drive states. In contrast, mental time travel by humans is relatively unconstrained and allows a more rapid and flexible adaptation to complex, changing environments than is afforded by instincts or conventional learning. Past and future events loom large in much of human thinking, giving rise to cultural, religious, and scientific concepts about origins, destiny, and time itself.
Memory is one of the few psychological concepts with a truly ancient lineage. Presenting a history of the interrelated changes in memory tasks, memory technology and ideas about memory from antiquity to the late twentieth century, this book confronts psychology's 'short present' with its 'long past'. Kurt Danziger, one of the most influential historians of psychology of recent times, traces long-term continuities from ancient mnemonics and tools of inscription to modern memory experiments and computer storage. He explores historical discontinuities, showing how different kinds of memory became prominent at different times, and examines these changes in the context of specific themes including the question of truth in memory, distinctions between kinds of memory, the project of memory experimentation and the physical localization and conceptual location of memory. Daniziger's unique approach provides a historical perspective for understanding varieties of reproduction, narratives of the self and short-term memory.
Memory of past episodes provides a sense of personal identity—the sense that I am the same person as someone in the past. We present a neurological case study of a patient who has accurate memories of scenes from his past, but for whom the memories lack the sense of mineness. On the basis of this case study, we propose that the sense of identity derives from two components, one delivering the content of the memory and the other generating the sense of mineness. We argue that this new model of the sense of identity has implications for debates about quasi-memory. In addition, articulating the components of the sense of identity promises to bear on the extent to which this sense of identity provides evidence of personal identity.
Over the last several years, researchers have begun to appreciate the ways in which
questions of interest to personality and social psychologists can be addressed with
neuropyschological case material (e.g., Klein & Kihlstrom, 1998; Klein, Loftus, &
Kihlstrom, 1996; Macrae, Bodenhausen, Schloerscheidt, & Milne, 1998). In this
paper we show how a neuropsychological approach can contribute to our understanding
of the mental representation of self.Wefirst review some of the limitations
of studies of self that rely on findings from normal participants, and show how these
can be overcome by examining the performance of patients with
neuropsychological impairments. We then present the case of patient D.B., who
suffered profound amnesia as a result of anoxia following cardiac arrest, as an example
of the way in which the study of neuropsychological syndromes can cast important
new light on questions concerning the mental representation of self.
In this paper, I first consider a famous objection that the standard interpretation of the Lockean account of diachronicity (i.e., one’s sense of personal identity over time) via psychological connectedness falls prey to breaks in one’s personal narrative. I argue that recent case studies show that while this critique may hold with regard to some long-term autobiographical self-knowledge (e.g., episodic memory), it carries less warrant with respect to accounts based on trait-relevant, semantic self-knowledge. The second issue I address concerns the question of diachronicity from the vantage point that there are (at least) two aspects of self—the self of psycho-physical instantiation (what I term the epistemological self) and the self of first person subjectivity (what I term the ontological self; for discussion, see Klein SB, The self and its brain, Social Cognition, 30, 474–518, 2012). Each is held to be a necessary component of selfhood, and, in interaction, they are appear jointly sufficient for a synchronic sense of self (Klein SB, The self and its brain, Social Cognition, 30, 474–518, 2012). As pertains to diachronicity, by contrast, I contend that while the epistemological self, by itself, is precariously situated to do the work required by a coherent theory of personal identity across time, the ontological self may be better positioned to take up the challenge.
The ability to mentally simulate hypothetical scenarios is a rapidly growing area of research in both psychology and neuroscience. Episodic future thought, or the ability to simulate specific personal episodes that may potentially occur in the future, represents one facet of this general capacity that continues to garner a considerable amount of interest. The purpose of this article is to elucidate current knowledge and identify a number of unresolved issues regarding this specific mental ability. In particular, this article focuses on recent research findings from neuroimaging, neuropsychology, and clinical psychology that have demonstrated a close relation between episodic future thought and the ability to remember personal episodes from one's past. On the other hand, considerations of the role of abstracted (semantic) representations in episodic future thought have been noticeably absent in the literature. The final section of this article proposes that both episodic and semantic memory play an important role in the construction of episodic future thoughts and that their interaction in this process may be determined by the relative accessibility of information in memory.
© The Author(s) 2010.
The existence of multiple memory systems has been proposed in a number of areas, including cogni- tive psychology, neuropsychology, and the study of animal learning and memory. We examine whether the existence of such multiple systems seems likely on evolutionary grounds. Multiple sys- tems adapted to serve seemingly similar functions, which differ in important ways, are a common evolutionary outcome. The evolution of multiple memory systems requires memory systems to be specialized to such a degree that the functional problems each system handles cannot be handled by another system. We define this condition as functional incompatibility and show that it occurs for a number of the distinctions that have been proposed between memory systems. The distinction be- tween memory for song and memory for spatial locations in birds, and between incremental habit formation and memory for unique episodes in humans and other primates provide examples. Not all memory systems are highly specialized in function, however, and the conditions under which memory systems could evolve to serve a wide range of functions are also discussed. Memory is a function that permits animals and people to ac- quire, retain, and retrieve many different kinds of information. It allows them to take advantage of previous experience to help solve the multitude of problems with which their environment confronts them, such as how to recognize the familiar, predict events, return to particular places, and assess the consequences of behavior Recently the question has arisen as to whether the
In this paper we argue that autobiographical memory can be conceptualized as a mental state resulting from the interplay of a set of psychological capaci- ties—self-reflection, self-agency, self-ownership and personal temporal- ity—that transform a memorial representation into an autobiographical personal experience. We first review evidence from a variety of clinical do- mains—for example, amnesia, autism, frontal lobe pathology, schizophre- nia—showing that breakdowns in any of the proposed components can produce impairments in autobiographical recollection, and conclude that the self-reflection, agency, ownership, and personal temporality are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for autobiographical memorial experience. We then suggest a taxonomy of amnesic disorders derived from consideration of the consequences of breakdown in each of the individual component processes that contribute to the experience of autobiographical recollection.
The fundamental nature of human time experience has concerned artists, poets, philosophers, and scientists throughout the ages. Any consideration of human action requires awareness of its temporal aspects. However, simply to view time in the same units and dimensions as the physicist employs in describing events robs personal time of its "lived" quality. The use of physical time concepts in the description of human events is often artificial and misleading. It fails to account for the facts that human time estimates rarely match clock and calendar time; that societies and individuals demonstrate vast differences in their constructions and uses of time; and that temporal perceptions and attitudes change within an individual both during a single day and throughout his life span. The present volume does not view time as something that is sensed in the same way that one would sense or perceive spatial or sensory stimuli. Rather, it views time as a complex set of personally experienced cognitive constructs used by individuals and cultures to account for the order, the duration, and the organization of events. The authors in this book take a strong departure from earlier psychophysical studies of a "time sense" and address themselves to the uses and elaborations of time concepts in personal and social functioning.
Many people with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are remarkably proficient at remembering how things look and sound, even years after an event. They are also good at rote learning and establishing habits and routines. Some even have encyclopaedic memories. However, all individuals with ASD have difficulty in recalling personal memories and reliving experiences, and less able people may have additional difficulty in memorising facts. This book assembles new research on memory in autism to examine why this happens and the effects it has on people's lives. The contributors utilise recent advances in the understanding of normal memory systems and their breakdown as frameworks for analysing the neuropsychology and neurobiology of memory in autism. The unique patterning of memory functions across the spectrum illuminates difficulties with sense of self, emotion processing, mental time travel, language and learning, providing a window into the nature and causes of autism itself. © Cambridge University Press 2008 and Cambridge University Press, 2009.
This book proposes a theory of human cognitive evolution, drawing from paleontology, linguistics, anthropology, cognitive science, and especially neuropsychology. The properties of humankind's brain, culture, and cognition have coevolved in a tight iterative loop; the main event in human evolution has occurred at the cognitive level, however, mediating change at the anatomical and cultural levels. During the past two million years humans have passed through three major cognitive transitions, each of which has left the human mind with a new way of representing reality and a new form of culture. Modern humans consequently have three systems of memory representation that were not available to our closest primate relatives: mimetic skill, language, and external symbols. These three systems are supported by new types of ''hard'' storage devices, two of which (mimetic and linguistic) are biological, one technological. Full symbolic literacy consists of a complex of skills for interacting with the external memory system. The independence of these three uniquely human ways of representing knowledge is suggested in the way the mind breaks down after brain injury and confirmed by various other lines of evidence. Each of the three systems is based on an inventive capacity, and the products of those capacities - such as languages, symbols, gestures, social rituals, and images - continue to be invented and vetted in the social arena. Cognitive evolution is not yet complete: the externalization of memory has altered the actual memory architecture within which humans think. This is changing the role of biological memory and the way in which the human brain deploys its resources; it is also changing the form of modern culture.
When one is immersed in the fascinating world of neuroscience findings, the brain might start to seem like a collection of "modules," each specializes in a specific mental feat. But just like in other domains of Nature, it is possible that much of the brain and mind's operation can be explained with a small set of universal principles. Given exciting recent developments in theory, and empirical findings and computational studies, it seems that the generation of predictions might be one strong candidate for such a universal principle. This is the focus of this book. From the predictions required when a rat navigates a maze to food-caching in scrub-jays; from predictions essential in decision-making to social interactions; from predictions in the retina to the prefrontal cortex; and from predictions in early development to foresight in non-humans. The perspectives represented in this collection span a spectrum from the cellular underpinnings to the computational principles underlying future-related mental processes, and from systems neuroscience to cognition and emotion. In spite of this diversity, they share some core elements. Memory, for instance, is critical in any framework that explains predictions. In asking "what is next?" our brains have to refer to memory and experience on the way to simulating our mental future. But as much as this collection offers answers to important questions, it raises and emphasizes outstanding ones. How are experiences coded optimally to afford using them for predictions? How do we construct a new simulation from separate memories? How specific in detail are future-oriented thoughts, and when do they rely on imagery, concepts, or language?
Do we 'perceive' time? In what sense does memory give us access to the past? Can photographs and paintings capture more than a single moment? What is 'fictional time'? These apparently disparate questions all concern the ways in which we represent aspects of time, in thought, experience, art, and fiction. They also raise fundamental problems for our philosophical understanding, both of mental representation, and of the nature of time itself. This book brings together issues in philosophy, psychology, aesthetics, and literary theory in examining the mechanisms underlying our representation of time in various media, and brings these to bear on metaphysical debates over the real nature of time. These debates concern questions over which aspects of time are genuinely part of time's intrinsic nature, and which, in some sense, are mind-dependent. Arguably, the most important debate concerns time's passage: does time pass in reality, or is the division of events into past, present and future simply a reflection of our temporal perspective - a result of the interaction between a 'static' world and minds capable of representing it? It is argued that contrary to what perception and memory lead us to suppose, time does not really pass, and this surprising conclusion can be reconciled with the characteristic features of temporal experience. The book goes on to consider the representation of time in art and fiction, and draws on the metaphysical and psychological themes previously discussed to cast light on the nature of depiction and fictional narrative.
Consciousness can best be described as a continuum, ranging from simple wakefulness to so-called autonoetic consciousness that is to a level where one reflects about oneself as being embedded in a certain environment and a given point of time in life. Consciousness is also seen as interwoven in socio-cultural contexts. We will discuss facets of this continuum and relate them to ontogenetic and phylogenetic states of individuals. This will be done by pointing out parallels between the development of memory systems and the development of the self in human beings, and by showing that most animal species lack insight and foresight and the capacity to travel back and forth in time; and that as a consequence of these incapacities animals stand on a lower level of consciousness. Furthermore, it will be shown that in human beings the development of language and theory of mind functions contributes to the establishment of a conscious mind. The social and cultural context has to be added as mechanisms that contribute and manifest the ability to consciously reflect on the environment. Both an insufficient ontogenetic development and disturbed brain functions in later life may be lead to disturbances of consciousness. This will be discussed with respect to a number of neurological and psychiatric disease conditions. On the neurological site, damage to specific core regions in the brain, but also of more widespread networks ("default mode networks") may impair consciousness significantly. On the psychiatric level, there are so to say standard illnesses such as schizophrenia which cloud conscious reflection. Of higher interest are, however, more rare disease conditions as dissociative (psychogenic) amnesias which frequently lead to identity disturbances or a complete loss of identity and therefore to a change in consciousness which is radically different from that which occurs as a consequence of drug or alcohol abuse, or after degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. States and mechanisms of consciousness consequently will be discussed within this spectrum of pathological conditions and processes with the aim to provide an integrated framework of attributes necessary for autonoetic - self-reflected - consciousness.
This chapter is organized into two main sections. First, it provides an overview of the concept of "autonoetic consciousness," which is defined as the capacity to be consciously aware of one's continued temporal existence. Second, it outlines various "predictive" mental activities that deal with the extended, or "non-immediate," future of the individual. These include future orientation, episodic future thought, planning, and prospective memory. Furthermore, the chapter considers the nature in which these "predictive" mental activities relate to one another and how, ultimately, each depends on the capacity of autonoetic consciousness.
This article examines the effects of memory loss on a patient's ability to remember the past and imagine the future. We present the case of D.B., who, as a result of hypoxic brain damage, suffered severe amnesia for the personally experienced past. By contrast, his knowledge of the nonpersonal past was relatively preserved. A similar pattern was evidenced in his ability to anticipate future events. Although D.B. had great difficulty imagining what his experiences might be like in the future, his capacity to anticipate issues and events in the public domain was comparable to that of neurologically healthy, age-matched controls. These findings suggest that neuropsychological dissociations between episodic and semantic memory for the past also may extend to the ability to anticipate the future.
In this paper I argue that much of the confusion and mystery surrounding the concept of Self can be traced to a failure to appreciate the distinction between the self as a collection of diverse neural components that provide us with our beliefs, memories, desires, personality, emotions, etc. (the epistemological self) and the self that is best conceived as subjective, unified awareness, a point of view in the first person (ontological self). While the former can, and indeed has, been extensively studied by researchers of various disciplines in the human sciences, the latter most often has been ignored-treated more as a place holder attached to a particular predicate of interest (e.g., concept, reference, deception, esteem, image, regulation, etc.). These two aspects of the self, I contend, are not reducible-one being an object (the epistemological self) and the other a subject (the ontological self). Until we appreciate the difficulties of applying scientific methods and analysis to what cannot be reduced to an object of inquiry without stripping it of its essential aspect (its status as subject), progress on the Self, taken as a pluralistic construct, will continue to address only one part of the problems we face in understanding this most fundamental aspect of human experience.
In this study we describe a patient, GA, who developed an amnesic-confabulatory syndrome, following a subarachnoid haemorrhage and ischaemia due to rupture of the anterior communicating artery and subsequent vasospasm. As far as the performance on memory tasks was concerned, GA's confabulation was found to be restricted to the autobiographical aspect of episodic memory. Confabulation did not manifest itself in episodic learning tasks nor on tasks tapping various kinds of semantic knowledge. In contrast, GA confabulated in orientation in time and place tasks and also in tasks where she was required to plan her personal future. GA's confabulation could not be accounted for in terms of an impairment of strategic retrieval or of reality monitoring processes. It is suggested that GA's confabulation reflects a pathological awareness of personal temporality.
I discuss the relation between future mental time travel (FMTT) and episodic and semantic memory. I then examine the nature of the "self" assumed to be projected or imagined in the future and types of subjective temporalities. Based on this discussion, I argue that a person absent episodic memory could imagine a personal future as the result of (a) the fact that semantic memory, as well as episodic memory, can be self-referential, (b) the finding that semantic memory can enable certain forms of FMTT, and (c) the ability to position semantic self-knowledge within the temporal parameters associated with semantic memory.
Delay of gratification and temporal span were investigated in 58 girls, ages four to nine years, by estimated story durations, delay of gratification in a direct choice money test, and reproduction of a 60-second interval. All measures were highly related (p > .001) to age and cognitive-temporal stage, with the former relationships of greater magnitude.
In this paper we describe a special form of future thinking, termed “episodic foresight” and its relation with episodic and semantic memory. We outline the methodologies that have largely been developed in the last five years to assess this capacity in young children and non-human animals. Drawing on Tulving's definition of episodic and semantic memory, we provide a critical analysis of the role that both types of memory might have on the episodic foresight tasks described in the literature. We conclude by highlighting some unanswered questions and suggesting future directions for research that could further our understanding of how memory is intimately connected to episodic foresight.
The term 'episodic memory' refers to our memory for unique, personal experiences, that we can date at some point in our past - our first day at school, the day we got married. It has again become a topic of great importance and interest to psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers. How are such memories stored in the brain, why do certain memories disappear (especially those from early in childhood), what causes false memories (memories of events we erroneously believe have really taken place)? Since Endel Tulving's classic book 'Episodic memory' (OUP, 1983) very few books have been published on this topic. In recent years however, many of the assumptions made about episodic memory have had to be reconsidered as a result of new techniques, which have allowed us a far deeper understanding of episodic memory.
In 'Episodic memory: new directions in research' three of the worlds leading researchers in the topic of memory have brought together a stellar team of contributors from the fields of cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and neuroscience, to present an account of what we now know about about this fundamentally important topic. The list of contributors includes, amongst others, Daniel Schacter, Richard Morris, Fareneh Vargha-Khadem, and Endel Tulving. The work presented within this book will have a profound effect on the direction that future research in this topic will take.