Brief Report
Episodic future thought and its relation to remembering: Evidence from ratings of subjective experience

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2007.04.006Get rights and content

Abstract

The goal of the present study was to examine the hypothesis that the ability to construct vivid mental images of the future involves sampling the contents of memory. In two experiments, participants envisioned future scenarios occurring in contextual settings that were represented in memory in varying degrees of perceptual detail. In both experiments, detailed contextual settings were associated with more detailed images of the future and a stronger subjective experience. Our findings suggest that the contents of memory are routinely sampled during the construction of personal future scenarios.

Introduction

Imagine for a moment a future gathering with family members and relatives. What is the occasion? Who is there? When and where does the event take place? According to Tulving, 1985, Tulving, 2002, Wheeler et al., 1997 this ability to envision specific future scenarios, termed episodic future thought, may be related to the ability to recollect specific personal episodes from our past (Atance & O’Neill, 2001). In support of Tulving’s argument, it has been shown that this capacity for mentally representing personal experiences in subjective time (both past and future) can be selectively impaired through brain damage (Hassabis et al., 2007, Klein et al., 2002, Tulving, 1985, Williams et al., 1996); that it appears rather late in ontogenetic development (Atance and Meltzoff, 2005, Atance and O’Neill, 2001, Atance and O’Neill, 2005, Busby and Suddendorf, 2005, Suddendorf and Busby, 2005); and that the phenomenological experience associated with both aspects may be similarly influenced by factors such as temporal distance from the present (D’Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2004) and individual difference variables such as capacity for visual imagery (D’Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2006).

Taken together, the associated evidence suggests a close relationship between the personal past and future. However, it does not specify the nature of the relation. One may only conclude that mental representations of the personal past and future are similarly influenced by a particular set of variables; namely, brain damage, age, and phenomenological characteristics. One possibility might be that envisioning the future tends to involve the reinstatement of perceptual (sensory, visual–spatial) context from memory (Okuda et al., 2003). This hypothesis is supported by a couple of recent functional neuroimaging investigations into the neural correlates of past and future thought (Addis et al., 2007, Szpunar et al., 2007). In these studies, participants were asked to imagine specific past and future scenarios (for 10–20 s) in response to a series of word cues (e.g., exam, car). Both studies found an impressive correspondence in patterns of brain activity during past and future thought, relative to various non-episodic control tasks. Interestingly, many of the brain regions showing similar patterns of activity during past and future thought are traditionally believed to underlie memory related functions (e.g., medial temporal lobes, Addis et al., 2007, Buckner and Carroll, 2007, Schacter and Addis, 2007, Szpunar and McDermott, 2007, Szpunar et al., 2007).

In light of such findings, Schacter and Addis (2007) have proposed what they call the “constructive episodic simulation” hypothesis. They argue that one important function of retaining personal memories is that aspects of previously-experienced events are used in envisioning the future. Indeed, D’Argembeau and Van der Linden, 2004, D’Argembeau and Van der Linden, 2006 have shown that participants tend to envision past and future events in similar settings (e.g., at home).

The aim of the two experiments reported here was to further elucidate the nature of this proposed interrelationship between the past and future. A common index of how well someone is able to recollect their past is based on their subjective experience associated with the memory (Tulving, 1985). The more detailed the mental representation, the more likely that person is to express feeling as if they are back in the past re-experiencing the event (Brewer, 1986, Tulving, 1985). Here we ask whether the same relationship holds when participants are required to imagine the future. That is, if mental representations of the future are based upon the contents of memory, then the phenomenological quality of episodic future thought should vary based on the contents of memory that have been sampled.

Section snippets

Experiment 1

Participants imagined future events—occurring within the next week—in the context of either familiar (e.g., home) or novel (e.g., jungle) settings. According to reality monitoring theory (Johnson et al., 1993, Johnson and Raye, 1981), mental images based on personal experience (i.e., memory) will be associated with more perceptual detail relative to mental images based on imagination and should therefore be experienced as being more vivid. If memory were sampled during episodic future thought,

Experiment 2

In this experiment, we varied the extent to which familiar settings were characterized by perceptual detail. Participants were instructed to engage in episodic future thought—occurring within the next week—in either recently (e.g., university campus) or remotely (e.g., high school) experienced contextual settings. Contextual settings experienced on a daily basis are represented in greater perceptual detail than more remotely experienced settings (Brewer, 1986). Accordingly, we predicted that

Discussion

The present study examined the hypothesis that the ability to construct vivid mental images of the future (i.e., episodic future thought) involves sampling the contents of memory. It is well known from research on human episodic memory that the subjective experience of reliving an event from the past is positively correlated with the vividness of the mental representation of the episode (Tulving, 1985). We hypothesized that if episodic future thought does indeed rely upon memory (Addis et al.,

References (25)

  • W.F. Brewer

    What is autobiographical memory?

  • H. Ebbinghaus

    Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology

    (1885)
  • Cited by (186)

    • 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

      2022, Cognition
      Citation Excerpt :

      In previous work, sensory detail and scene coherence have shown some variability in how strongly associated they are with empathy-related measures (e.g., Campbell et al., 2021; Vollberg et al., 2021). Research on the phenomenology of episodic memories has considered sensory detail and scene coherence (or location clarity) to be aspects of overall vividness, along with other contextual information (e.g., Arnold et al., 2011; D'Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2006, 2012; Szpunar & McDermott, 2008). Others have suggested that vividness ratings may index the salience or availability of particular details, as opposed to the total amount or number of them (Cooper, Kensinger, & Ritchey, 2019; D'Angiulli et al., 2013; Sawczak et al., 2019; Thakral et al., 2020).

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text