Inducing involuntary and voluntary mental time travel using a laboratory paradigm

On second thoughts: Testing the underlying mechanisms of spontaneous future thought

The human capacity to imagine possible future events unintentionally, with minimal cognitive effort, is termed spontaneous future thought (SFT). This paper addresses an important theoretical question for cognitive science: What are the possible cognitive mechanisms underlying such SFT experiences? We contrasted three hypotheses present in the literature: the online construction hypothesis, the recasting hypothesis, and the memories of future thoughts hypothesis. Study 1 (N = 41) used novel subjective ratings which challenged the recasting mechanism: SFTs were mostly rated as dissimilar to autobiographical memories, suggesting they are not simply past experiences 'recast' as future events. Study 2 (N = 90) used a novel experimental paradigm, comparing effects of voluntary episodic future constructions and non-personal narratives upon subsequent spontaneous thought sampling. Results suggested that voluntary future constructions remain accessible to spontaneous retrieval, supporting the memories of future thoughts hypothesis. This finding, and other data presented across the two studies, still indicates a role for online construction processes in SFT, but further empirical work is needed to clarify how and when constructive processes are engaged in SFT. Taken together, these two studies represent initial efforts to elucidate the mechanisms underlying SFT, providing the first proof-of-principle that deliberately envisioned future events can reappear, without intention, in consciousness at some later time, and further supporting the dual process account of future thinking. These methods and findings provide a firm basis for subsequent experimental and longitudinal research on SFT.

Direct retrieval as a theory of involuntary autobiographical memories: evaluation and future directions

I evaluate the conception of direct retrieval as originally formulated in the Self-Memory System model (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce [2000]. The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system. Psychological Review, 107(2), 261-288. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.107.2.261). In the hierarchical memory organisation proposed in the Self-Memory System model, direct retrieval is described as a bottom-up associative process. While its theoretical role within this model is clear, systematic empirical examination of direct retrieval, viewed as a natural and observable phenomenon, has been hampered by inconsistent operationalisations. Here, I suggest that direct retrieval should be treated as a theoretical concept, aiming at explaining the phenomenon of involuntary (spontaneously arising) autobiographical memories. I evaluate predictions derived from the concept of direct retrieval against findings on involuntary autobiographical memories obtained over the past 25 years. Most of these predictions are consistent with the evidence, notably, the enhanced episodic specificity and constructive nature of involuntary autobiographical memories. However, the theory also has critical limitations. It did not predict the frequent occurrence of involuntary recollections in daily life, exceeding the prevalence of voluntary memories. Additionally, it overlooked the early emergence of spontaneously arising event memories in ontogenesis and their presence in other species, such as great apes. Future advancements of the Self-Memory System model should integrate evolutionary perspectives to address these limitations.

The Subjective Experience of Autobiographical Remembering: Conceptual and Methodological Advances and Challenges

The investigation of the phenomenology of autobiographical memories (i.e., how a memory is subjectively experienced and its meaning) has provided an important contribution to our understanding of autobiographical remembering. Over the last two decades, the study of phenomenology has received widespread scientific attention, and the field has undergone quite relevant conceptual and methodological changes. In the present work, we (1) review some basic and well-established research findings and methodological achievements; (2) discuss new theoretical and methodological challenges, with a special focus on the issue of the phenomenological experience of the retrieval process and its relationship with the phenomenology of the products of retrieval; and (3) propose an alternative way of conceptualizing and understanding it in the framework of experimental phenomenology.

Individual differences in the frequency of voluntary & involuntary episodic memories, future thoughts, and counterfactual thoughts

Voluntary and involuntary mental time travel can take the form of episodic memory, episodic future thinking, and episodic counterfactual thinking. This study uses an individual-differences approach to understand why people engage in these forms of mental time travel. The individual-differences variables include trait-level personality, boredom proneness, depression, anxiety, stress, emotion regulation, mindfulness, mind-wandering, positive and negative affect, rumination, optimism, thinking styles, and time perspective. Across two studies, our results indicate that individual differences underlie these forms of mental time travel. The most unique, episodic counterfactual thinking, was alone positively correlated with negative emotionality and negatively correlated with optimism. We also observe differences as a function of voluntariness and discuss these findings in relation to the cognitively demanding nature of constructing future and counterfactual thoughts. We discuss the importance of distinguishing voluntary from involuntary thinking and assessing episodic counterfactual thinking in relation to episodic memory and episodic future thinking.

Intention and Monitoring Influence the Content of Memory Reports

OBJECTIVES

While voluntary memories are intended and expected, involuntary memories are retrieved with no intention and are usually unexpected (when one is not waiting for a memory). The present study investigates the effects of retrieval intentionality (wanting to retrieve a memory) and monitoring processes (expecting a memory to appear) on the characteristics of autobiographical memories.

METHODS

To this end, by applying mixed-method analysis of memory descriptions (i.e. combining qualitative with quantitative analyses) we re-analysed the large pool of involuntary and voluntary memories obtained in one previously published study, asking independent judges to rate all the memories on several dimensions reflecting memory accessibility (i.e. the likelihood that a memory can be retrieved).

RESULTS

When discussing our findings, we speculate that there may be several stages of memory retrieval that might be differently influenced by intention and monitoring.

CONCLUSIONS

We discuss the novel hypothesis that there may be two different types of monitoring that operate independently of each other, before and after retrieval, respectively.

Collective remembering and future forecasting during the COVID-19 pandemic: How the impact of COVID-19 affected the themes and phenomenology of global and national memories across 15 countries

The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique set of circumstances in which to investigate collective memory and future simulations of events reported during the onset of a potentially historic event. Between early April and late June 2020, we asked over 4,000 individuals from 15 countries across four continents to report on remarkable (a) national and (b) global events that (i) had happened since the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, and (ii) they expected to happen in the future. Whereas themes of infections, lockdown, and politics dominated global and national past events in most countries, themes of economy, a second wave, and lockdown dominated future events. The themes and phenomenological characteristics of the events differed based on contextual group factors. First, across all conditions, the event themes differed to a small yet significant degree depending on the severity of the pandemic and stringency of governmental response at the national level. Second, participants reported national events as less negative and more vivid than global events, and group differences in emotional valence were largest for future events. This research demonstrates that even during the early stages of the pandemic, themes relating to its onset and course were shared across many countries, thus providing preliminary evidence for the emergence of collective memories of this event as it was occurring. Current findings provide a profile of past and future collective events from the early stages of the ongoing pandemic, and factors accounting for the consistencies and differences in event representations across 15 countries are discussed.

Emotional closure in autobiographical memories: phenomenology and involuntary remembering

Open autobiographical memories are events without closure. The current study explored the influence of potential closure in the future. We compared the phenomenology and involuntary recall for events that were either closed, open with a possibility of closure, or open without such a possibility. Participants (N = 87) recalled these events in random order and answered phenomenology questions. We expected open events without closure possibility to be highest in negativity, emotional intensity, regret and involuntary recall frequency, followed by potentially open events and closed events. We found that emotional intensity at recall, negativity and involuntary recall frequency were higher for open than closed events. Open events without closure possibility were the highest in regret and evoked more negative affect upon involuntary recall than open events with closure possibility. We discussed our findings in relation to research on autobiographical memory and involuntary remembering, along with intrusion and possible clinical implications.

Effects of inhibitory control capacity and cognitive load on involuntary past and future thoughts: A laboratory study

The present study focused on involuntary thoughts about personal past events (i.e., involuntary autobiographical memories; IAMs), and involuntary thoughts about future events and plans (i.e., involuntary future thoughts; IFTs). The frequency of these involuntary thoughts is influenced by cognitive demands of ongoing activities, but the exact underlying mechanism(s) has yet to be revealed. The present study tested two possible explanations: (1) the special inhibitory mechanism switches on when one is engaged in attentionally demanding activities; (2) different levels of cognitive load interfere with cue-noticing that act as triggers for IAMs and IFTs. We report a study with pre-selected groups of participants that differed in terms of their individual level of inhibitory control capacity (high vs. low), and completed both standard and attentionally demanding versions of a laboratory vigilance task with irrelevant cue-words to trigger IAMs and IFTs, and random thought-probes to measure their frequency. To examine the level of incidental cue-noticing, participants also completed an unexpected cue-recognition task. Despite large differences between groups in inhibitory control capacity, the number of IFTs and IAMs, reported in the attentionally demanding condition, was comparable. In addition, high cognitive load reduced the number of IAMs, but not IFTs. Finally, the recognition of incidental cues encountered in the vigilance task was reduced under high cognitive load condition, indicating that poor cue-noticing may be the main underlying mechanism of cognitive load effect rather than the lack of inhibitory resources needed to suppress involuntary retrieval. This and other possible mechanisms and avenues for future research are discussed.

I remember therefore I am: Episodic memory retrieval and self-reported trait empathy judgments in young and older adults and individuals with medial temporal lobe excisions

How do we know what sort of people we are? Do we reflect on specific past instances of our own behaviour, or do we just have a general idea? Previous work has emphasized the role of personal semantic memory (general autobiographical knowledge) in how we assess our own personality traits. Using a standardized trait empathy questionnaire, we show in four experiments that episodic autobiographical memory (memory for specific personal events) is associated with people's judgments of their own trait empathy. Specifically, neurologically healthy young adults rated themselves as more empathic on questionnaire items that cued episodic memories of events in which they behaved empathically. This effect, however, was diminished in people who are known to have poor episodic memory: older adults and individuals who have undergone unilateral excision of medial temporal lobe tissue (as treatment for epilepsy). Further, self-report ratings on individual questionnaire items were generally predicted by subjectively rated phenomenological qualities of the memories cued by those items, such as sensory detail, scene coherence, and overall vividness. We argue that episodic and semantic memory play different roles with respect to self-knowledge depending on life experience, the integrity of the medial temporal lobes, and whether one is assessing general abstract traits versus more concrete behaviours that embody these traits. Future research should examine different types of self-knowledge as well as personality traits other than empathy.

The role of inhibitory control and ADHD symptoms in the occurrence of involuntary thoughts about the past and future: An individual differences study

In everyday life, people often experience involuntary thoughts about their personal past and future events in response to incidental cues in the environment. Yet, despite the abundance of such cues, our consciousness is not constantly flooded by these involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs) and involuntary future thoughts (IFTs). The main goal of the present study was to further investigate the possibility that cognitive inhibitory control keeps these involuntary cognitions at bay. To test this inhibition hypothesis, we conducted a large-scale study (n = 157) in which groups of participants with different levels of inhibitory control (low, medium, high) and individuals with ADHD spectrum symptoms were engaged in a laboratory vigilance task in which the frequency of IFTs and IAMs was assessed. Contrary to predictions, although participants across groups differed significantly in terms of their individual inhibitory control capacity, the number of IFTs and IAMs reported during the vigilance task was comparable. In addition, individuals with the ADHD spectrum symptoms did not report more spontaneous thoughts compared to other groups. Together, these findings lend little support for the idea that inhibition is a key mechanism that regulates the occurrence of IAMs and IFTs in everyday life. Other possible mechanisms and avenues for future research are discussed.

Episodic-semantic interactions in spontaneous thought

The distinction between a semantic memory system, encompassing conceptual knowledge, and an episodic memory system, characterized by specific episodes, is one of the most important theoretical proposals in cognitive science. However, the distinction between systems has rarely been discussed in relation to spontaneous thought that comes to mind with reduced cognitive effort and intentionality. In this review, we propose that the growing research on spontaneous thought can contribute to current discussions on the interaction between the episodic and semantic systems. Firstly, we review research that shows that, as in deliberate retrieval, spontaneous thoughts are influenced by both episodic and semantic memory, as reflected by the mix of semantic and episodic elements in descriptions of spontaneous thoughts, as well as semantic priming effects in spontaneous thoughts. We integrate the current evidence based on the interplay between cues and semantic activation. Namely, we suggest that cues are key to access episodic memory and modulate the frequency of spontaneous thought, while semantic activation modulates the content of spontaneous thought. Secondly, we propose that spontaneous retrieval is a privileged area to explore the question of functional independence between systems, because it provides direct access to the episodic system. We review the evidence for spontaneous thought in semantic dementia, which suggests that episodic and semantic systems are functionally independent. We acknowledge the scarcity of evidence and suggest that future studies examine the contents of spontaneous thought descriptions and their neural correlates to test the functional relationship and inform the interaction between episodic and semantic systems.

Prospective Memory and Positivity Bias in the COVID-19 Health Crisis: The Effects of Aging

This study aimed to determine whether the observed tendency to remember more positive than negative past events (positivity phenomena) also appears when recalling hypothetical events about the future. In this study, young, middle-aged, and older adults were presented with 28 statements about the future associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, half positive and half negative. In addition, half of these statements were endowed with personal implications while the other half had a more social connotations. Participants rated their agreement/disagreement with each statement and, after a distraction task, they recalled as many statements as possible. There was no difference in the agreement ratings between the three age groups, but the participants agreed with positive statements more than with negative ones and they identified more with statements of social content than of personal content. The younger and older individuals recalled more statements than the middle-aged people. More importantly, older participants recalled more positive than negative statements (positivity effect), and showed a greater tendency to turn negative statements into more positive or neutral ones (positivity bias). These findings showed that the positivity effect occurs in even such complex and situations as the present pandemic, especially in older adults. The results are discussed by reference to the notion of commission errors and false memories resulting from the activation of cognitive biases.

The stability of visual perspective and vividness during mental time travel

When remembering or imagining, people can experience an event from their own eyes, or as an outside observer, with differing levels of vividness. The perspective from, and vividness with, which a person remembers or imagines has been related to numerous individual difference characteristics. These findings require that phenomenology during mental time travel be trait-like-that people consistently experience similar perspectives and levels of vividness. This assumption remains untested. Across two studies (combined N = 295), we examined the stability of visual perspective and vividness across multiple trials and timepoints. Perspective and vividness showed weak within-session stability when reported across just a few trials but showed strong within-session stability when sufficient trials were collected. Importantly, both visual perspective and vividness demonstrated good-to-excellent across-session stability across different delay intervals (two days to six weeks). Overall, our results suggest that people dependably experience similar visual phenomenology across occurrences of mental time travel.

Spontaneous and deliberate future thinking: a dual process account

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.

Do intuitive ideas of the qualities that should characterize involuntary and voluntary memories affect their classification?

It is assumed that the difference between voluntary and involuntary autobiographical memories lies in the intentionality to retrieve a memory assigned by the experimenter. Memories that are retrieved when people are instructed to do so in response to cues are considered voluntary (VAMs), those that pop up spontaneously are considered involuntary (IAMs). VAMs and IAMs so classified are also found to differ in terms of phenomenological characteristics, such as perceived accessibility, vividness etc. These differences are assumed to be due to differences in intentionality and the different retrieval processes at play. It is possible, however, that these differences (which are subjective attributions of phenomenological characteristics) are the result of metacognitive beliefs of what IAMs and VAMs should be. In two experiments, we investigated the possible role of these metacognitive beliefs. Participants rated IAMs and VAMs on a number of phenomenological characteristics in two conditions, when these memories were presented in blocks that specified whether they were retrieved in a voluntary or involuntary task, or when presented in a mixed list with no information provided. If metacognitive beliefs influence the reporting of memory properties, then the block presentation would increase the differences between the characteristics of the two types of memories. The results showed that, besides replicating the characteristics of IAMs and VAMs already observed in the literature, there were almost no differences between the blocked and the mixed lists. We discuss the results as supporting the idea that the difference in characteristics attributed to IAMs and VAMs reflect a genuine difference in the nature of the retrieval and is not the result of pre-existing metacognitive belief on what a voluntary and an involuntary memory should be.

Out of the blue: understanding abrupt and wayward transitions in thought using probability and predictive processing

Thoughts that appear to come to us ‘out of the blue’ or ‘out of nowhere’ are a familiar aspect of mental experience. Such thoughts tend to elicit feelings of surprise and spontaneity. Although we are beginning to understand the neural processes that underlie the arising of such thoughts, little is known about what accounts for their peculiar phenomenology. Here, we focus on one central aspect of this phenomenology—the experience of surprise at their occurrence, as it relates to internal probabilistic predictions regarding mental states. We introduce a distinction between two phenomenologically different types of transitions in thought content: (i) abrupt transitions, which occur at surprising times but lead to unsurprising thought content, and (ii) wayward transitions, which occur at surprising times and also lead to surprising thought content. We examine these two types of transitions using a novel approach that combines probabilistic and predictive processing concepts and principles. We employ two different probability metrics—transition and occurrence probability—to characterize and differentiate between abrupt and wayward transitions. We close by discussing some potentially beneficial ways in which these two kinds of transitions in thought content may contribute to mental function, and how they may be implemented at the neural level.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Offline perception: voluntary and spontaneous perceptual experiences without matching external stimulation’.

Inducing positive involuntary mental imagery in everyday life: an experimental investigation

Positive involuntary mental imagery occurs frequently in daily life but evidence as to its functions and importance is largely indirect. The current study investigated a method to induce positive involuntary imagery in daily life, which would allow direct testing of its impact. An unselected student sample (N = 80) completed a single session of a positive imagery cognitive bias modification (CBM) paradigm, which involved listening to and imagining brief positive imagery scripts. Participants then recorded any involuntary memories of the imagined training scenarios in a three-day diary before returning to the lab for a follow-up assessment. Participants were randomised to imagine the scenarios in either an emotionally involved or emotionally detached manner, providing a test of the role of emotion in the subsequent experience of involuntary memories. Participants reported experiencing involuntary memories of the training scenarios in their daily life, but the number recorded did not differ between the experimental conditions. Exploratory analyses suggested that more vivid imagery and recall testing were associated with a greater number of involuntary memories. The study highlights the potential of the imagery CBM paradigm to further our understanding of the functions and potential importance of positive involuntary mental imagery in daily life.

A closer look at the timecourse of mind wandering: Pupillary responses and behaviour

Mind wandering (MW) refers to the shift of attention away from a primary task and/or external environment towards thoughts unrelated to the task. Recent evidence has shown that pupillometry can be used as an objective marker of the onset and maintenance of externally-driven MW episodes. In the present study we aimed to further investigate pupillary changes associated with the onset and duration of self-reported MW episodes. We used a modified version of the joint behavioural-pupillometry paradigm we recently introduced. Participants were asked to perform a monotonous vigilance task which was intermixed with task-irrelevant cue-phrases (visually presented verbal cues); they were instructed to interrupt the task whenever a thought came to mind (self-caught method) and to indicate the trigger of their thought, if any. We found systematic pupil dilation after the presentation of verbal cues reported to have triggered MW, compared with other verbal cues presented during a supposedly on-task period (i.e., the period immediately following the resuming of the task after a self-caught interruption and MW report). These results confirm that pupil diameter is sensitive to the changes associated with the onset of MW and its unfolding over time. Moreover, by computing the latency between the trigger presentation and the task interruption (self-catch), we could also estimate the duration of MW episodes triggered by verbal cues. However, a high variability was found, implying very large inter-event variability, which could not be explained by any of the MW properties we acquired (including: temporal focus, specificity, emotional valence). Our behavioural and pupillometry findings stress the need for objective measures about the temporal unfolding of MW (while most studies focus on arbitrary time-window preceding self-reports of MW).

Functions of spontaneous and voluntary future thinking: evidence from subjective ratings

Future thinking is defined as the ability to withdraw from reality and mentally project oneself into the future. The primary aim of the present study was to examine whether functions of future thoughts differed depending on their mode of elicitation (spontaneous or voluntary) and an attribute of goal-relatedness (selected-goal-related or selected-goal-unrelated). After producing spontaneous and voluntary future thoughts in a laboratory paradigm, participants provided ratings on four proposed functions of future thinking (self, directive, social, and emotional regulation). Findings showed that spontaneous and voluntary future thoughts were rated similarly on all functions except the directive function, which was particularly relevant to spontaneous future thoughts. Future thoughts classed as goal-related (selected-goal-related) were rated higher across all functions, and there was largely no interaction between mode of elicitation and goal-relatedness. A higher proportion of spontaneous future thoughts were selected-goal-related compared with voluntary future thoughts. In general, these results indicate that future thinking has significant roles across affective, behavioural, self and social functions, and supports theoretical views that implicate spontaneous future thought in goal-directed cognition and behaviour.

Involuntary autobiographical memories and future projections in social anxiety

Intrusive involuntary memories and images are a cardinal phenomenon in a range of psychological disorders, but not systematically examined in social anxiety. We examined potential biases upon generating involuntary versus voluntary memories and future projections in individuals with high and low levels of social anxiety. Participants recorded involuntary and voluntary autobiographical events, and their associated emotional response in a structured mental time travel diary. High social anxiety was associated with more intense anxiety and embarrassment and greater use of a range of emotion regulation strategies upon generating all types of autobiographical events. Involuntary (versus voluntary) memories and future events were associated with a heightened emotional response independent of social anxiety, and memories were associated with more embarrassment than imagined future events. The effects of high versus low social anxiety and involuntary versus voluntary generation process were independent from each other. The findings have implications for affective and cognitive models of involuntary memories and future projections in emotional disorders.

Deficits in Spontaneous Cognition as an Early Marker of Alzheimer's Disease

In the absence of a pharmacological cure, finding the most sensitive early cognitive markers of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is becoming increasingly important. In this article we review evidence showing that brain mechanisms of spontaneous, but stimulus-dependent, cognition overlap with key hubs of the default mode network (DMN) that become compromised by amyloid pathology years before the clinical symptoms of AD. This leads to the formulation of a novel hypothesis which predicts that spontaneous, but stimulus-dependent, conscious retrieval processes, that are generally intact in healthy aging, will be particularly compromised in people at the earliest stages of AD. Initial evidence for this hypothesis is presented across diverse experimental paradigms (e.g., prospective memory, mind-wandering), and new avenues for research in this area are outlined.

Mind-Wandering Changes in Dysphoria

Changes in mind-wandering (MW) and involuntary autobiographical memory (IAM) in dysphoria have been explored with conflicting results. The aim of this study was to evaluate both MW and IAM in a group of 23 stable dysphoric participants compared to 37 controls and to compare their thoughts characteristics (i.e., specificity, visual perspective, time orientation, and emotional valence). To make this study comparable with previous research, we used two different monotonous vigilance tasks (with and without verbal interference stimuli). Our results showed a significantly greater focus on MW thoughts in dysphoria. The characteristics of spontaneous thoughts content did not differ significantly between our dysphoric participants and controls, which is not in favor of strong emotional dysfunction. Our results suggest a difficulty to regulate the occurrence of self-generated thoughts rather than their content, that may confer to dysphoric subjects increased cognitive risk to develop a major depressive episode.

Imagining Events Alternative to the Present Can Attenuate Delay Discounting

Previous studies have shown that delay discounting (DD), the tendency to prefer smaller-immediate to larger-delayed rewards, decreases following vivid imagination of future events. Here, we test the hypothesis that imagining complex events alternative to direct (perceptual) experience, whether located in the future, the past, or even the present, would reduce DD. Participants (N = 250) imagined future events (Future condition), remembered past events (Past condition), imagined present events (Present-imagine condition), or reported on the current events (Present-attend condition), and then made a series of intertemporal choices about money and food. Compared to attending to the present, imagining the future reduced DD, but this only held for individuals who claimed vivid pre-experiencing of future events. Importantly, a similar attenuation of DD was found in the Past and Present-imagine conditions, suggesting that a shift in perspective from the perceptual present towards mentally constructed experience can downplay the appraisal of immediate rewards in favor of larger-delayed rewards, regardless of the location of the imagined experience in subjective time.

Direct and generative autobiographical memory retrieval: How different are they?

Theories of autobiographical memory have emphasised effortful generative retrieval, but recent research indicates that subjectively effortless direct retrieval is common. We compared the processes of direct and generative retrieval. Sixty-five participants retrieved 24 autobiographical memories across three cue types: concrete, emotional, and personal. We recorded retrieval latency, and participants judged direct versus generative retrieval and rated memory specificity, vividness, significance, rehearsal, and emotionality. Overall, direct retrieval was common, especially for personal cues. Directly retrieved memories were recalled faster, were less likely to be specific, and were rated more significant, rehearsed, and emotional than generatively retrieved memories. The speed of both direct and generative retrieval varied similarly according to cue type, suggesting they did not involve fundamentally different cognitive processes. These findings challenge theories that assume direct retrieval bypasses constructive processes. Instead we suggest that both direct and generative retrieval involve construction that is similarly affected by cue concreteness and relevance.

Self-narrative focus in autobiographical events: The effect of time, emotion, and individual differences

Individuals may take a self-narrative focus on the meaning of personal events in their life story, rather than viewing the events in isolation. Using the Centrality of Event Scale (CES; Berntsen & Rubin in Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44, 219-231, 2006) as our measure, we investigated self-narrative focus as an individual differences variable in addition to its established role as a measure of individual events. Three studies, with 169, 182, and 190 participants had 11, 10, and 11 different events varied across the dimensions of remembered past versus imagined future, distance from the present, and valence. Imagined future events, events more distant from the present, and positive events all had increased self-narrative focus, in agreement with published theories and findings. Nonetheless, CES ratings for individual events correlated positively with each other within individuals (r ~ .30) and supported a single factor solution. These results are consistent with a stable individual differences tendency toward self-narrative focus that transcends single events. Thus, self-narrative focus is both a response whereby people relate individual events to their life story and identity and an individual differences variable that is stable over a range of events. The findings are discussed in relation to narrative measures of autobiographical reasoning.

Spontaneous cognition in dysphoria: reduced positive bias in imagining the future

Anomalies in future-oriented cognition are implicated in the maintenance of emotional disturbance within cognitive models of depression. Thinking about the future can involve mental imagery or verbal-linguistic mental representations. Research suggests that future thinking involving imagery representations may disproportionately impact on-going emotional experience in daily life relative to future thinking not involving imagery (verbal-linguistic representation only). However, while higher depression symptoms (dysphoria) are associated with impaired ability to deliberately generate positive relatively to negative imagery representations of the future (when instructed to do so), it is unclear whether dysphoria is associated with impairments in the tendency to do so spontaneously (when not instructed to deliberately generate task unrelated cognition of any kind). The present study investigated dysphoria-linked individual differences in the tendency to experience spontaneous future-oriented cognition as a function of emotional valence and representational format. Individuals varying in dysphoria level reported the occurrence of task unrelated thoughts (TUTs) in real time while completing a sustained attention go/no-go task, during exposure to auditory cues. Results indicate higher levels of dysphoria were associated with lower levels of positive bias in the number of imagery-based future TUTs reported, reflecting higher negative imagery-based future TUT generation (medium to large effect size), and lower positive imagery-based TUT generation (small to medium effect size). Further, this dysphoria-linked bias appeared to be specific in temporal orientation (future, not past) and representational format (imagery, not non-imagery). Reduced tendency to engage in positive relative to negative imagery-based future thinking appears to be implicated in dysphoria.

Why are we not flooded by involuntary thoughts about the past and future? Testing the cognitive inhibition dependency hypothesis

In everyday life, involuntary thoughts about future plans and events occur as often as involuntary thoughts about the past. However, compared to involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs), such episodic involuntary future thoughts (IFTs) have become a focus of study only recently. The aim of the present investigation was to examine why we are not constantly flooded by IFTs and IAMs given that they are often triggered by incidental cues while performing undemanding activities. One possibility is that activated thoughts are suppressed by the inhibitory control mechanism, and therefore depleting inhibitory control should enhance the frequency of both IFTs and IAMs. We report an experiment with a between-subjects design, in which participants in the depleted inhibition condition performed a 60-min high-conflict Stroop task before completing a laboratory vigilance task measuring the frequency of IFTs and IAMs. Participants in the intact inhibition condition performed a version of the Stroop task that did not deplete inhibitory control. To control for physical and mental fatigue resulting from performing the 60-min Stroop tasks in experimental conditions, participants in the control condition completed only the vigilance task. Contrary to predictions, the number of IFTs and IAMs reported during the vigilance task, using the probe-caught method, did not differ across conditions. However, manipulation checks showed that participants' inhibitory resources were reduced in the depleted inhibition condition, and participants were more tired in the experimental than in the control conditions. These initial findings suggest that neither inhibitory control nor physical and mental fatigue affect the frequency of IFTs and IAMs.

Spontaneous future cognition: the past, present and future of an emerging topic

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.

How intention to retrieve a memory and expectation that a memory will come to mind influence the retrieval of autobiographical memories

While involuntary memories are retrieved with no intention and are usually unexpected (when one is not waiting for a memory to arise), voluntary memories are intended and expected (when one is searching and waiting for a memory to arise). The present study aimed to investigate the effects of retrieval intentionality (i.e. wanting to retrieve a memory) and monitoring processes (i.e. waiting for a memory to appear) during autobiographical memory retrieval. In addition, we introduced two novel laboratory conditions that have not been used in previous research on voluntary memories: in the first, participants were asked to report anything they could think of in response to each cue word; in the second, they could skip a word if nothing came to mind. These novel manipulations allowed us to differentiate between voluntary memories retrieved in response to experimenter-generated cues (when participants were forced to provide a memory or a thought for each cue) and self-selected cues (when participants were free to not answer a cue if they found it too difficult). We found that highly accessible memories were mostly experienced when retrieval was involuntary and unexpected, while memories with low accessibility were accessed through intentional retrieval and monitoring processes. Response times for memories recalled in the experimenter-generated cue conditions were longer compared to the self-selected cue conditions. This novel finding shows that experimenter-generated recall favours memories with low accessibility; it further supports the idea that, in a substantial number of trials, voluntary memories are directly rather than effortfully retrieved. The idea that the driving force behind differences between involuntary and voluntary memories is not the intention per se is further discussed.

My future is brighter than yours: the positivity bias in episodic future thinking and future self-images

Numerous studies on episodic future thinking have demonstrated that individuals perceive their future as more positive and idyllic than their past. It has been suggested that this positivity bias might serve a self-enhancement function. Yet, conflicting findings and lack of systematic studies on the generalizability of the phenomenon leave this interpretation uncertain. We provide the first systematic examination of the positivity bias across different domains and tasks of future thinking. First, we use the same tasks in two different domains of future thinking, representing an episodic (events) and a semantic dimension (self-images), respectively. Second, we use two different measures of positivity bias (i.e., frequency of positive versus negative instances and their distance from present). Third, we contrast each measure in each domain for events/self-images related to self versus an acquaintance. Experiments 1 and 2 showed a strong, general tendency for the generation of positive future events/self-images, but most pronounced for self, relative to an acquaintance. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that positive future events/self-images were dated closer to present, whereas negative ones were pushed further into the future, but only for self and not for an acquaintance. Our results support the idea that the positivity bias in future thinking serves a self-enhancement function and that this bias likely represents a similar underlying motivational mechanism across different domains of future thinking, whether episodic or semantic. The findings add to our understanding of the motivational functions served by different forms of future thoughts in relation to the self.

Inducing spontaneous future thoughts in younger and older adults by priming future-oriented personal goals

In the past 15 years, the study of spontaneous thoughts (i.e., thoughts coming to mind without intention and effort) has received increased attention. Spontaneous future thoughts (SFTs) are particularly important (e.g., in planning), yet difficult to study with regard to age differences. Two main problems arise: (1) lab tasks including word-cues induce more past than future thoughts; (2) younger adults report more spontaneous thoughts than older adults. To improve the elicitation of SFTs, we developed a future-oriented goal-related priming procedure and analyzed the extension of the goal-related priming effect in SFTs to older adults, to examine whether age-related changes in personal goals compromise the elicitation of SFTs. We also controlled for methodological factors that could influence age groups differently (including demand, retrospection, meta-awareness and instruction bias). Twenty-seven younger and 27 older adults performed a low-demand vigilance task including word-cues and were periodically stopped to describe their thoughts. The vigilance task was divided into two parts and, between them, participants performed a future-oriented goal-related priming task. An additional group of 27 younger participants performed the same procedure with a control task based on word counting. We found a significant increase in SFTs after priming in both age groups, but not in the control group, indicating that the priming manipulation was effective. This result suggests that age-related changes in personal goals do not disrupt the relation between personal goals and SFT frequency. The similar pattern of overall spontaneous thought in both age groups is also discussed considering methodological factors.

The tendency for experiencing involuntary future and past mental time travel is robustly related to thought suppression: an exploratory study

Involuntary mental time travel (MTT) refers to projecting oneself into the past or into the future without prior conscious effort. The previous studies have shown high inter-individual variability in the frequency of involuntary MTT, but a few systematic studies exist. In three exploratory studies, we investigated the relation between individual differences in experiencing involuntary past and future MTT, and selected emotional and cognitive processes, with a special focus on thought suppression. Across all three studies, thought suppression emerged as a robust predictor of involuntary MTT above and beyond emotion-related variables, mind-wandering, daydreaming styles, and demographic variables. Findings from Studies 1 and 2 showed that higher thought suppression consistently predicted both more frequent involuntary past and future MTT across an American and a Danish sample, whereas rumination and emotion regulation were less consistently related to involuntary MTT. In Study 3, thought suppression reliably predicted more frequent involuntary MTT, even when controlling for mind-wandering, as well as for positive and negative daydreaming styles, which were all related to greater involuntary MTT. Overall, the individual differences assessed showed similar relationships to the tendency for having past and future involuntary MTT, with the possible exception of daydreaming styles, which appeared more strongly related to future-directed involuntary MTT.

Spontaneous future cognitions: an integrative review

Spontaneous future cognitions refer to mental representations about the future that enter consciousness with no immediately preceding attempt of bringing them to mind. They are studied under different terms in several areas of psychology, but with little interdisciplinary exchange of findings and theoretical developments. Different conceptions of spontaneous future cognition derive from separate literatures and are rarely considered together, leaving their potential conceptual overlaps as well as their unique features unclarified. In this article, I review research on spontaneous future cognitions in relation to mind wandering, involuntary episodic future thoughts, and intrusive future imagery in cravings and clinical disorders. I conclude that more research is needed to clarify the potential functions served by spontaneous future cognitions in everyday life, under which conditions they may become dysfunctional, how they are triggered by situational cues, and how their content may be constrained by motivational factors and beliefs. The burgeoning field of spontaneous future cognitions forms a promising novel approach to the cognitive and motivational regulation of behavior in everyday life.

Involuntary memories and involuntary future thinking differently tax cognitive resources

During the past 20 years involuntary memories have been established as a noteworthy phenomenon, which occur spontaneously in everyday life and with greater frequency than expected. Other types of ideations also occur involuntarily and very frequently, both in the normal population and in clinical groups. The aim of this paper was to assess for the first time whether involuntary memories and involuntary future thoughts differ in the amount of cognitive resources, considering that both are experienced as being rather automatic. As in previous work on mind wandering, this was done by assessing the effect of different conditions on frequency of spontaneous thoughts about past and future. Involuntary memories and future thoughts were obtained in an experimental setting (vigilance task) that mimics a mind-wandering task. In it, participants saw slides (trials) with horizontal or vertical (target) lines. In half or one-fourth of the trials verbal cues were also presented. In a third condition one-fourth of the trials had verbal cues and one-fourth had simple arithmetic calculations. Participants were asked to report any mental content that crosses their mind when the vigilance task stopped. Results show that the manipulation modulates the number of both involuntary memories and future thoughts, and both engage cognitive resources. Future involuntary thoughts seem to require more cognitive effort than involuntary memories and, specifically, future scenarios require more cognitive resources than both involuntary memories and future plans. The results support previous findings showing that reporting spontaneous mental contents makes use of cognitive resources and are discussed linking the involuntary memory literature with mind wandering and metacognitive processes.

Conversational Time Travel: Evidence of a Retrospective Bias in Real Life Conversations

We examined mental time travel reflected onto individuals' utterances in real-life conversations using a naturalistic observation method: Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR, a portable audio recorder that periodically and unobtrusively records snippets of ambient sounds and speech). We introduced the term conversational time travel and examined, for the first time, how much individuals talked about their personal past versus personal future in real life. Study 1 included 9,010 sound files collected from 51 American adults who carried the EAR over 1 weekend and were recorded every 9 min for 50 s. Study 2 included 23,103 sound files from 33 young and 48 healthy older adults from Switzerland who carried the EAR for 4 days (2 weekdays and 1 weekend, counterbalanced). 30-s recordings occurred randomly throughout the day. We developed a new coding scheme for conversational time travel: We listened to all sound files and coded each file for whether the participant was talking or not. Those sound files that included participant speech were also coded in terms of their temporal focus (e.g., past, future, present, time-independent) and autobiographical nature (i.e., about the self, about others). We, first, validated our coding scheme using the text analysis tool, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. Next, we compared the percentages of past- and future-oriented utterances about the self (to tap onto conversational time travel). Results were consistent across all samples and showed that participants talked about their personal past two to three times as much as their personal future (i.e., retrospective bias). This is in contrast to research showing a prospective bias in thinking behavior, based on self-report and experience-sampling methods. Findings are discussed in relation to the social functions of recalling the personal past (e.g., sharing memories to bond with others, to update each other, to teach, to give advice) and to the directive functions of future-oriented thought (e.g., planning, decision making, goal setting that are more likely to happen privately in the mind). In sum, the retrospective bias in conversational time travel seems to be a functional and universal phenomenon across persons and across real-life situations.

Absence of age effects on spontaneous past and future thinking in daily life

Previous research on voluntary mental time travel (i.e., deliberately thinking about the past or future) has resulted in negative age effects. In contrast, studies on spontaneous past thoughts (i.e., involuntary autobiographical memories) have reported small or no age effects. The aim of the present research was to investigate the effects of age on the nature and frequency of spontaneous future thoughts in everyday life. In two studies, we examined whether older adults reported spontaneous future thoughts as often as younger adults, and whether these thoughts were predominantly goal-oriented and less dependent on incidental cues than thoughts about the past. In Study 1, young and old participants kept a diary of spontaneous thoughts of upcoming prospective memory tasks and involuntary autobiographical memories for 2 weeks. In Study 2, a 1-day experience sampling method was used to investigate spontaneous and deliberate task-unrelated future and past thoughts, by having young and old participants complete a questionnaire in response to 30 random signals. In both studies, no age effects were found in the frequency of spontaneous future thoughts, which were reported as frequently as thoughts about the past (Study 2) and referred predominantly to upcoming tasks and goals rather than future events or hypothetical events (Study 2). Results concerning the triggers of reported thoughts provide initial support for the idea that representations of future thoughts may be more activated than memories of past events. Taken together, these results have important implications for research on cognitive ageing, mind-wandering, prospective memory and involuntary autobiographical memories.

Children's behavior and spontaneous talk in a future thinking task

We explored 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds' (N = 120) "explicit" and "spontaneous" future-oriented cognition. Specifically, children had to think ahead to meet a future physiological need (desire for food) or psychological need (avoiding boredom). One group of children alternated between a room with candy and a room without candy, spending 3 min per visit. Children were explicitly asked which room they wanted to put extra candy in for a future visit to the lab (correct answer: room without candy). A second group of children underwent the same procedure but with toys as the resource instead of food (a replication of Atance et al. in J Exp Child Psychol 129:98-109, 2015). In the food condition, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds all placed candy in the correct room above chance, but only 4- and 5-year-olds were above chance in the toy condition. Overall, 4- and 5-year-olds outperformed 3-year-olds, and children performed better in the food condition than the toy condition. Children's spontaneous (or "involuntary") future thinking was assessed by coding their utterances while in the two rooms. Children who solved the explicit task uttered more task-relevant future and past statements than children who failed. Examining spontaneous talk also allowed us to explore children's spontaneous "solving" of the task before being asked an explicit test question. This research highlights the importance of varying stimuli in future thinking tasks and developing methods to capture spontaneous/involuntary future thinking in young children.

Space-time interaction: visuo-spatial processing affects the temporal focus of mind wandering

Our understanding of mind wandering (MW) has dramatically increased over the past decade. Studies have shown that in the vast majority of cases, MW is directed to times other than the present, and a bias toward the future has been reported (prospective bias). The processing of time is not independent of the processing of space: humans represent time along a spatial continuum, on a "mental time line" (MTL). In cultures with a left to right reading/writing system, the MTL expands from left to right. Capitalizing on these findings, here we aimed at investigating the effects of visuo-spatial processing on the temporal orientation of spontaneous MW, and specifically we asked whether we could steer the temporal focus of MW towards the past or the future, by experimentally inducing a leftward and a rightward orienting of attention, respectively. To this aim, we experimentally manipulated the spatial orientation demands associated with the focal task in two independent groups, with a leftward orienting of attention (left-pointing arrows, LA group) and a rightward orienting of attention (right-pointing arrows, RA group). We found that the temporal orientation of MW critically depended on the spatial orientation demands of the task: specifically, the proportion of spontaneous past-oriented MW episodes was higher under the induction of a leftward orienting attention (LA group) than under the induction of a rightward orienting attention (RA group). The opposite pattern was found for spontaneous future-oriented MW episodes. Possible mechanisms involved in this effect and their implications for research on MW and spontaneous cognition are discussed.

Towards a new methodological approach: A novel paradigm for covertly inducing and sampling different forms of spontaneous cognition

A wide range of cognitions is generated involuntarily in the human mind daily. We developed a paradigm, which covertly induces and samples spontaneous cognitions in the visual and auditory modalities, focusing on 3 key characteristics: spontaneity, repetition, and emotional valence. Sixty participants watched two visual clips while listening to music and assessed their characteristics. Post-induction, participants closed their eyes for 5 min and then completed a questionnaire, which indirectly samples different forms of spontaneous cognition. Induction was effective in all categories. Results indicated that different forms of spontaneous musical cognitions are experienced as longer in duration and less negative in emotional valence compared to visual cognitions. The findings are discussed in relation to spontaneous cognition methodology and experiences in different modalities. Spontaneous cognitions are multifaceted and not unitary constructs as previously considered and studied, and as such the novel induction and sampling paradigm presents a promising line of research.

Do children and adolescents have a future-oriented bias? A developmental study of spontaneous and cued past and future thinking

Previous research has indicated that adults have a future-oriented cognitive bias, one illustration of which is their tendency to report more thoughts about the future than the past during mind-wandering. We examined whether children showed a similar bias, and whether there were any developmental changes in the magnitude of such a bias. Children aged 6–7 and 9–10 years, adolescents, and adults completed two tasks in which they could report either past or future thoughts: a mind-wandering task assessing spontaneous past and future thinking and a cued episodic thinking task in which they were free to describe either past or future events. Only adults showed a future-oriented bias in the mind-wandering task. Participants in all groups were much more likely to describe past events in the cue word task, and the proportion of future events described did not change developmentally. However, more than a third of the youngest age group produced no descriptions at all of future events, which was a significantly larger proportion than in any other age groups, and illustrates the difficulty that some children of this age have with future thinking. Our findings indicate that future-oriented bias and developmental changes in such bias may be task-specific.

Thinking about the past and future in daily life: an experience sampling study of individual differences in mental time travel

Remembering the past and imagining the future are hallmarks of mental time travel. We provide evidence that such experiences are influenced by individual differences in temporal and affective biases in cognitive style, particularly brooding rumination (a negative past-oriented bias) and optimism (a positive future-oriented bias). Participants completed a 7-day, cellphone-based experience-sampling study of temporal orientation and mental imagery. Multilevel models showed that individual differences in brooding rumination predicted less vivid and positive past- and future-oriented thoughts, even after controlling for depressed mood. People high in brooding rumination were also more likely to report thinking about a past experience when probed at random during the day. Conversely, optimists were more likely to report more vivid and positive future-oriented, but not past-oriented thoughts, although they did not report thinking more or less often about the past and future. The results suggest that temporal and affective biases in cognitive style influence how people think about the past and future in daily life.

Tracking the Dynamics of Mind Wandering: Insights from Pupillometry

Mind wandering (MW) refers to the shift of attention away from a primary task towards thoughts unrelated to the task. Here we show that significant new insight into the dynamics of this process can be gained by using pupillometry. Participants performed a monotonous vigilance task which was intermixed with task-irrelevant verbal cues. At fixed times, we interrupted them and asked what they were thinking about immediately prior to the probe and what had triggered their thought. We observed pupil dilation after the presentation of verbal cues reported to have triggered MW, compared with other verbal cues with similar emotional content. Thus, MW is associated with pupil dilation. We also analysed the pupil-constriction response to the task-stimuli (vertical and horizontal bars, to be categorized as targets and non-targets for the vigilance task), and found that this was unchanged during MW. We conclude that pupil size provides an index of MW, objective and covert and that this may be exploited in further studies to understand whether and how MW affects the processing of sensory stimuli.

Envisioning the times of future events: The role of personal goals

Episodic future thinking refers to the human capacity to imagine or simulate events that might occur in one's personal future. Previous studies have shown that personal goals guide the construction and organization of episodic future thoughts, and here we sought to investigate the role of personal goals in the process of locating imagined events in time. Using a think-aloud protocol, we found that dates were directly accessed more frequently for goal-related than goal-unrelated future events, and the goal-relevance of events was a significant predictor of direct access to temporal information on a trial-by-trial basis. Furthermore, when an event was not directly dated, references to anticipated lifetime periods were more frequently used as a strategy to determine when a goal-related event might occur. Together, these findings shed new light on the mechanisms by which personal goals contribute to the location of imagined events in future times.

How intention and monitoring your thoughts influence characteristics of autobiographical memories

Involuntary autobiographical memories come to mind effortlessly and unintended, but the mechanisms of their retrieval are not fully understood. We hypothesize that involuntary retrieval depends on memories that are highly accessible (e.g., intense, unusual, recent, rehearsed), while the elaborate search that characterizes voluntary retrieval also produces memories that are mundane, repeated or distant - memories with low accessibility. Previous research provides some evidence for this 'threshold hypothesis'. However, in almost every prior study, participants have been instructed to report only memories while ignoring other thoughts. It is possible that such an instruction can modify the phenomenological characteristics of involuntary memories. This study aimed to investigate the effects of retrieval intentionality (i.e., wanting to retrieve a memory) and selective monitoring (i.e., instructions to report only memories) on the phenomenology of autobiographical memories. Participants were instructed to (1) intentionally retrieve autobiographical memories, (2) intentionally retrieve any type of thought (3) wait for an autobiographical memory to spontaneously appear, or (4) wait for any type of thought to spontaneously appear. They rated the mental content on a number of phenomenological characteristics both during retrieval and retrospectively following retrieval. The results support the prediction that highly accessible memories mostly enter awareness unintended and without selective monitoring, while memories with low accessibility rely on intention and selective monitoring. We discuss the implications of these effects.

Reconstructing the times of past and future personal events

Humans have the remarkable ability to mentally travel through past and future times. However, while memory for the times of past events has been much investigated, little is known about how imagined future events are temporally located. Using a think-aloud protocol, we found that the temporal location of past and future events is rarely directly accessed, but instead mostly relies on reconstructive and inferential strategies. References to lifetime periods and factual knowledge (about the self, others, and the world) were most frequently used to determine the temporal location of both past and future events. Event details (e.g., places, persons, or weather conditions) were also used, but mainly for past events. Finally, the results showed that events whose temporal location was directly accessed were judged more important for personal goals. Together, these findings shed new light on the mechanisms involved in locating personal events in past and future times.

Impact of age-relevant goals on future thinking in younger and older adults

This study investigated how personal goals influence age differences in episodic future thinking. Research suggests that personal goals change with age and like autobiographical memory, future thinking is thought to be organised and impacted by personal goals. It was hypothesised that cueing older adults with age-relevant goals should modulate age differences in episodic details and may also influence phenomenological characteristics of imagined scenarios. Healthy younger and older adults completed the Future Thinking Interview [Addis, D. R., Wong, A. T., & Schacter, D. L. (2008). Age-related changes in the episodic simulation of future events. Psychological Science, 19(1), 33-41. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02043.x ] adapted to activate age-appropriate goals. Narratives were scored with an established protocol to obtain objective measures of episodic and semantic details. Subjective features such as emotionality and personal significance showed age differences as a function of goal domain while other features (e.g., vividness) were unaffected. However, consistent with prior reports, older adults produced fewer episodic details than younger adults and this was not modulated by goal domain. The results do not indicate that goal activation affects level of episodic detail. With respect to phenomenological aspects of future thinking, however, younger adults show more sensitivity to goal activation, compared with older adults.

Mental time travel to the future might be reduced in sleep

We present a quantitative study of mental time travel to the future in sleep. Three independent, blind judges analysed a total of 563 physiology-monitored mentation reports from sleep onset, REM sleep, non-REM sleep, and waking. The linguistic tool for the mentation report analysis is based on established grammatical and cognitive-semantic theories and has been validated in previous studies. Our data indicate that REM and non-REM sleep must be characterized by a reduction in mental time travel to the future, which would support earlier physiological evidence at the level of brain function.