Episodic simulation of helping behavior in younger and older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic

Imagining helping a person in need increases one's willingness to help beyond levels evoked by passively reading the same stories. We examined whether episodic simulation can increase younger and older adults' willingness to help in novel scenarios posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Across 3 studies we demonstrate that episodic simulation of helping behavior increases younger and older adults' willingness to help during both everyday and COVID-related scenarios. Moreover, we show that imagining helping increases emotional concern, scene imagery, and theory of mind, which in turn relate to increased willingness to help. Studies 2 and 3 also showed that people produce more internal, episodic-like details when imagining everyday compared to COVID-related scenarios, suggesting that people are less able to draw on prior experiences when simulating such novel events. These findings suggest that encouraging engagement with stories of people in need by imagining helping can increase willingness to help during the pandemic.

Mnemicity versus temporality: Distinguishing between components of episodic representations

Human beings regularly "mentally travel" to past and future times in memory and imagination. In theory, whether an event is remembered or imagined (its "mnemicity") underspecifies whether it is oriented toward the past or the future (its "temporality"). However, it remains unclear to what extent the temporal orientation of such episodic simulations is cognitively represented separately from their status as memory or imagination. To address this question, we investigated to what extent episodic simulations are distinguishable in recall by virtue of both temporal orientation and mnemicity. In three experiments (N = 360), participants were asked to generate and later recall events differing along the lines of temporal orientation (past/future) and mnemicity (remembered/imagined). Across all of our experiments, we found that mnemicity and temporality each contributed to participants' ability to discriminate different types of event simulations in recall. However, participants were also consistently more likely to confuse in recall event simulations that shared the same temporal orientation rather than the same mnemicity. These results show that the temporal orientation of episodic simulations can be cognitively represented separately from their mnemicity and have implications for debates about the structure of episodic representations as well as the role of temporality in this structure. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

How Imagination and Memory Shape the Moral Mind

Interdisciplinary research has proposed a multifaceted view of human cognition and morality, establishing that inputs from multiple cognitive and affective processes guide moral decisions. However, extant work on moral cognition has largely overlooked the contributions of episodic representation. The ability to remember or imagine a specific moment in time plays a broadly influential role in cognition and behavior. Yet, existing research has only begun exploring the influence of episodic representation on moral cognition. Here, we evaluate the theoretical connections between episodic representation and moral cognition, review emerging empirical work revealing how episodic representation affects moral decision-making, and conclude by highlighting gaps in the literature and open questions. We argue that a comprehensive model of moral cognition will require including the episodic memory system, further delineating its direct influence on moral thought, and better understanding its interactions with other mental processes to fundamentally shape our sense of right and wrong.

Imagining a Personalized Scenario Selectively Increases Perceived Risk of Viral Transmission for Older Adults

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a serious and prolonged public-health emergency. Older adults have been at substantially greater risk of hospitalization, ICU admission, and death due to COVID-19; as of February 2021, over 81% of COVID-19-related deaths in the U.S. occurred for people over the age of 65^1,2. Converging evidence from around the world suggests that age is the greatest risk factor for severe COVID-19 illness and for the experience of adverse health outcomes^3,4. Therefore, effectively communicating health-related risk information requires tailoring interventions to older adults' needs⁵. Using a novel informational intervention with a nationally-representative sample of 546 U.S. residents, we found that older adults reported increased perceived risk of COVID-19 transmission after imagining a personalized scenario with social consequences. Although older adults tended to forget numerical information over time, the personalized simulations elicited increases in perceived risk that persisted over a 1-3 week delay. Overall, our results bear broad implications for communicating information about health risks to older adults, and they suggest new strategies to combat annual influenza outbreaks.

Divergent thinking and constructing future events: dissociating old from new ideas

Divergent thinking (the ability to generate creative ideas by combining diverse types of information) has been previously linked to the ability to imagine novel and specific future autobiographical events. Here, we examined whether divergent thinking is differentially associated with the ability to construct novel imagined future events and recast future events (i.e., actual past events recast as future events) as opposed to recalled past events. We also examined whether different types of creative ideas (i.e., old ideas from memory or new ideas from imagination) underlie the linkage between divergent thinking and various autobiographical events. Divergent thinking ability was measured using the Alternate Uses Task (AUT). In Experiment 1, the amount of episodic details for both novel and recast future events was associated with divergent thinking (AUT scores), and this relationship was significant with AUT scores for new creative ideas but not old creative ideas. There was no significant relationship between divergent thinking and the amount of episodic detail for recalled past events. We extended these findings in Experiment 2 to a different test of divergent thinking, the Consequences Task. These results demonstrate that individual differences in divergent thinking are associated with the capacity to both imagine and recast future events.

Post-retrieval Distortions of Self-Referential Negative Memory: Valence Consistency Enhances Gist-Directed False, While Non-negative Interference Generates More Intrusive Updates

According to the theory of reconsolidation, the contents of an original memory can be updated after reactivation with subsequent new learnings. However, there seems to be a lack of an appropriate behavioral paradigm to study the reconsolidation of explicit self-related memory, which is of great significance to further explore its cognitive neural mechanism in the future. In two separate experiments, we adapted a trial-by-trial interfering paradigm with a self-episodic simulation process and investigated (1) whether it is possible to reconsolidate negative memories under the new behavioral paradigm and (2) how the emotional valence of post-retrieval interference material affects the reconsolidation of negative memories. The results showed that the negative memories under trial-by-trial self-simulation can be degraded and updated via post-retrieval interference processes. Individuals whose original memories were reactivated by initial background cues and who were then presented with new interference situations were less able to recall original scenes and showed more memory intrusions on these scenes than those who had experienced new learning without reactivation or only reactivation without interference. Furthermore, the extent and manner of memory change/updating were greatly influenced by the characteristics of interference information. For memories with negative valences, new learning materials with the same valence produced superior interference effects in the form of lower correct recalls and more integrated false; whereas the neutral interference materials can cause more memory intrusion. Post-retrieval memory distortions of negative self-memory may underlie different functional mechanisms.

The effect of episodic future simulation and motivation on young children's induced-state episodic foresight

Future simulation and motivation are two strategies that might help children improve their induced-state episodic foresight. In Study 1, 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 96) consumed pretzels (to induce thirst) and were asked what they would prefer the next day, pretzels or water. Children were randomly assigned to an experimental condition: (1) a standard thirsty condition, (2) an episodic simulation condition where they imagined being hungry the next day, (3) a motivation condition where children chose between a cupcake and water, or (4) a control condition (thirst was not induced). Future preferences did not differ by age and children were less likely to choose water (vs. a cupcake) in the motivation condition compared to the standard thirsty condition. Study 2 found that 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 22) were also less likely to choose water for right now versus a cupcake when thirst was induced.

A role for the medial temporal lobe subsystem in guiding prosociality: the effect of episodic processes on willingness to help others

Why are we willing to help others? Recent behavioral work on episodic processes (i.e. the ability to represent an event that is specific in time and place) suggests that imagining and remembering scenes of helping a person in need increases intentions to help. Here, we provide insight into the cognitive and neural mechanisms that enhance prosocial intentions via episodic simulation and memory. In Experiment 1, we scanned participants using functional neuroimaging as they imagined and remembered helping episodes, and completed non-episodic control conditions accounting for exposure to the story of need and conceptual priming of helping. Analyses revealed that activity in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) subsystem, as well as the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ) predicted the effect of conditions on the strength of prosocial intentions. In Experiment 2, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt activity in the RTPJ, and better isolate the contribution of MTL subsystem to prosocial intentions. The effect of conditions on willingness to help remained even when activity in the RTPJ was disrupted, suggesting that activity in the MTL subsystem may primarily support this prosocial effect. It seems our willingness to help may be guided, in part, by how easily we can construct imagined and remembered helping episodes.

Impaired episodic simulation in a patient with visual memory deficit amnesia

For the first time, we assess episodic simulation in a patient with visual memory deficit amnesia, following damage to visual association cortices. Compared to control participants, the patient with visual memory deficit amnesia shows severely restricted responses when asked to simulate different types of future episodic scenarios. Surprisingly, the patient's responses are more limited in cases where the scenarios require less reliance on visual information. We explain this counterintuitive finding through discussing how the severe retrograde amnesia in visual memory deficit amnesia limits the patient's access to episodic memories in which vision has not been a focus of their life. As a result, we argue that the deficits in visual memory deficit amnesia continue to distinguish it from amnesia after direct damage to the hippocampus.

Specificity of Future Thinking in Depression: A Meta-Analysis

Reduced specificity of autobiographical memory has been well established in depression, but whether this overgenerality extends to future thinking has not been the focus of a meta-analysis. Following a preregistered protocol, we searched six electronic databases, Google Scholar, and personal libraries and contacted authors in the field for studies matching search terms related to depression, future thinking, and specificity. We reduced an initial 7,332 results to 46 included studies, with 89 effect sizes and 4,813 total participants. Random-effects meta-analytic modeling revealed a small but robust correlation between reduced future specificity and higher levels of depression (r = -.13, p < .001). Of the 11 moderator variables examined, the most striking effects were related to the emotional valence of future thinking (p < .001) and the sex of participants (p = .025). Namely, depression was linked to reduced specificity for positive (but not negative or neutral) future thinking, and the relationship was stronger in samples with a higher proportion of males. This meta-analysis contributes to our understanding of how prospection is altered in depression and dysphoria and, by revealing areas where current evidence is inconclusive, highlights key avenues for future research.

Implicit Memory, Constructive Memory, and Imagining the Future: A Career Perspective

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.

Visual Perspectives in Episodic Memory and the Sense of Self

The connection between memory and self-consciousness has been a central topic in philosophy of memory. When remembering an event we experienced in the past, not only do we experience being the subject of the conscious episode, but we also experience being the protagonist in the memory scene. This is the “phenomenal presence of self.” To explore this special sense of self in memory, this paper focuses on the issue of how one identifies oneself in episodic simulation at the retrieval of memory and draws attention to the field and observer perspectives in episodic memory. Metzinger (2013a,b, 2017) recently introduced the concept of the phenomenal unit of identification (UI) to characterize the phenomenal property that gives rise to the conscious experience of “I am this.” This paper shows how observer-perspective remembering provides an interesting opportunity for studying the sense of self. It is argued that observer-perspective remembering is a stable state of consciousness that is distinct from autoscopic phenomena with respect to the dimensions of minimal phenomenal self (MPS). Together, the notion of UI and the particular style of remembering offer a way of understanding the phenomenal presence of self, and three possible ways in which phenomenal properties constitute UI in memory are raised. The study of perspectives in episodic simulation may prompt new empirical and conceptual issues concerning both the sense of identity and the relationship between MPS and extended self.

A Role for the Left Angular Gyrus in Episodic Simulation and Memory

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies indicate that episodic simulation (i.e., imagining specific future experiences) and episodic memory (i.e., remembering specific past experiences) are associated with enhanced activity in a common set of neural regions referred to as the core network. This network comprises the hippocampus, medial prefrontal cortex, and left angular gyrus, among other regions. Because fMRI data are correlational, it is unknown whether activity increases in core network regions are critical for episodic simulation and episodic memory. In the current study, we used MRI-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to assess whether temporary disruption of the left angular gyrus would impair both episodic simulation and memory (16 participants, 10 females). Relative to TMS to a control site (vertex), disruption of the left angular gyrus significantly reduced the number of internal (i.e., episodic) details produced during the simulation and memory tasks, with a concomitant increase in external detail production (i.e., semantic, repetitive, or off-topic information), reflected by a significant detail by TMS site interaction. Difficulty in the simulation and memory tasks also increased after TMS to the left angular gyrus relative to the vertex. In contrast, performance in a nonepisodic control task did not differ statistically as a function of TMS site (i.e., number of free associates produced or difficulty in performing the free associate task). Together, these results are the first to demonstrate that the left angular gyrus is critical for both episodic simulation and episodic memory.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Humans have the ability to imagine future episodes (i.e., episodic simulation) and remember episodes from the past (i.e., episodic memory). A wealth of neuroimaging studies have revealed that these abilities are associated with enhanced activity in a core network of neural regions, including the hippocampus, medial prefrontal cortex, and left angular gyrus. However, neuroimaging data are correlational and do not tell us whether core regions support critical processes for simulation and memory. In the current study, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation and demonstrated that temporary disruption of the left angular gyrus leads to impairments in simulation and memory. The present study provides the first causal evidence to indicate that this region is critical for these fundamental abilities.

Reducing future fears by suppressing the brain mechanisms underlying episodic simulation

Imagining future events conveys adaptive benefits, yet recurrent simulations of feared situations may help to maintain anxiety. In two studies, we tested the hypothesis that people can attenuate future fears by suppressing anticipatory simulations of dreaded events. Participants repeatedly imagined upsetting episodes that they feared might happen to them and suppressed imaginings of other such events. Suppressing imagination engaged the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which modulated activation in the hippocampus and in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Consistent with the role of the vmPFC in providing access to details that are typical for an event, stronger inhibition of this region was associated with greater forgetting of such details. Suppression further hindered participants' ability to later freely envision suppressed episodes. Critically, it also reduced feelings of apprehensiveness about the feared scenario, and individuals who were particularly successful at down-regulating fears were also less trait-anxious. Attenuating apprehensiveness by suppressing simulations of feared events may thus be an effective coping strategy, suggesting that a deficiency in this mechanism could contribute to the development of anxiety.

Parental bonding and neuropsychological performance are associated with episodic simulation of future events in trauma-exposed patients with major depressive disorder

INTRODUCTION

Major depressive disorder (MDD) and trauma-related disorders are associated with deficits in remembering the past and imagining the future (i.e., episodic simulation). We examined parental bonding and neuropsychological performance in relation to episodic simulation in trauma-exposed patients with recurrent MDD.

METHODS

Trauma-exposed patients with MDD (n = 21) and matched controls (n = 20) completed a future-oriented Autobiographical Interview, the Parental Bonding Instrument, and a standardized neuropsychological battery.

RESULTS

Patients with major depressive disorder generated fewer episodic details for future neutral events compared to controls. Although higher reported levels of maternal care were associated with increased specificity of negative future events among the patient group, higher maternal overprotection was related to decreased specificity of negative and positive future events. Higher levels of performance on measures of intelligence, verbal memory, executive functioning, and sustained attention were associated with increased specificity of future events.

CONCLUSIONS

Maternal relations during childhood and neuropsychological performance are related to the specificity of episodic simulation in adult patients with MDD. Childhood experience continues to influence memory performance into adulthood.

Remembering the past and imagining the future: Identifying and enhancing the contribution of episodic memory

Recent studies have shown that imagining or simulating future events relies on many of the same cognitive and neural processes as remembering past events. According to the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis (Schacter and Addis, 2007), such overlap indicates that both remembered past and imagined future events rely heavily on episodic memory: future simulations are built on retrieved details of specific past experiences that are recombined into novel events. An alternative possibility is that commonalities between remembering and imagining reflect the influence of more general, non-episodic factors such as narrative style or communicative goals that shape the expression of both memory and imagination. We consider recent studies that distinguish the contributions of episodic and non-episodic processes in remembering the past and imagining the future by using an episodic specificity induction - brief training in recollecting the details of a past experience - and also extend this approach to the domains of problem solving and creative thinking. We conclude by suggesting that the specificity induction may target a process of scene construction that contributes to episodic memory as well as to imagination, problem solving, and creative thinking.

Future planning: default network activity couples with frontoparietal control network and reward-processing regions during process and outcome simulations

We spend much of our daily lives imagining how we can reach future goals and what will happen when we attain them. Despite the prevalence of such goal-directed simulations, neuroimaging studies on planning have mainly focused on executive processes in the frontal lobe. This experiment examined the neural basis of process simulations, during which participants imagined themselves going through steps toward attaining a goal, and outcome simulations, during which participants imagined events they associated with achieving a goal. In the scanner, participants engaged in these simulation tasks and an odd/even control task. We hypothesized that process simulations would recruit default and frontoparietal control network regions, and that outcome simulations, which allow us to anticipate the affective consequences of achieving goals, would recruit default and reward-processing regions. Our analysis of brain activity that covaried with process and outcome simulations confirmed these hypotheses. A functional connectivity analysis with posterior cingulate, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior inferior parietal lobule seeds showed that their activity was correlated during process simulations and associated with a distributed network of default and frontoparietal control network regions. During outcome simulations, medial prefrontal cortex and amygdala seeds covaried together and formed a functional network with default and reward-processing regions.

Constructive memory: past and future

Human memory is not a literal reproduction of the past, but instead relies on constructive processes that are sometimes prone to error and distortion. Understanding of constructive memory has accelerated during recent years as a result of research that has linked together its cognitive and neural bases. This article focuses on three aspects of constructive memory that have been the target of recent research: (i) the idea that certain kinds of memory distortions reflect the operation of adaptive cognitive processes that contribute to the efficient functioning of memory; (ii) the role of a constructive memory system in imagining or simulating possible future events; and (iii) differences between true and false memories that have been revealed by functional neuroimaging techniques. The article delineates the theoretical implications of relevant research, and also considers some clinical and applied implications.

Individualized Theory of Mind (iToM): When Memory Modulates Empathy

Functional neuroimaging studies have noted that brain regions supporting theory of mind (ToM) overlap remarkably with those underlying episodic memory, suggesting a link between the two processes. The present study shows that memory for others’ past experiences modulates significantly our appraisal of, and reaction to, what is happening to them currently. Participants read the life story of two characters; one had experienced a long series of love-related failures, the other a long series of work-related failures. In a later faux pas recognition task, participants reported more empathy for the character unlucky in love in love-related faux pas scenarios, and for the character unlucky at work in work-related faux pas scenarios. The memory-based modulation of empathy correlated with the number of details remembered from the characters’ life story. These results suggest that individuals use memory for other people’s past experiences to simulate how they feel in similar situations they are currently facing. The integration of ToM and memory processes allows adjusting mental state inferences to fit unique social targets, constructing an individualized ToM.

Constructing memory, imagination, and empathy: a cognitive neuroscience perspective

Studies on memory, imagination, and empathy have largely progressed in isolation. Consequently, humans' empathic tendencies to care about and help other people are considered independent of our ability to remember and imagine events. Despite this theoretical autonomy, work from across psychology, and neuroscience suggests that these cognitive abilities may be linked. In the present paper, I tentatively propose that humans' ability to vividly imagine specific events (as supported by constructive memory) may facilitate prosocial intentions and behavior. Evidence of a relationship between memory, imagination, and empathy comes from research that shows imagination influences the perceived and actual likelihood an event occurs, improves intergroup relations, and shares a neural basis with memory and empathy. Although many questions remain, this paper outlines a new direction for research that investigates the role of imagination in promoting empathy and prosocial behavior.