Abstract
All organisms capable of long-term memory are necessarily oriented toward the future. We propose that one of the most important adaptive functions of long-term episodic memory is to store information about the past in the service of planning for the personal future. Because a system should have especially efficient performance when engaged in a task that makes maximal use of its evolved machinery, we predicted that future-oriented planning would result in especially good memory relative to other memory tasks. We tested recall performance of a word list, using encoding tasks with different temporal perspectives (e.g., past, future) but a similar context. Consistent with our hypothesis, future-oriented encoding produced superior recall. We discuss these findings in light of their implications for the thesis that memory evolved to enable its possessor to anticipate and respond to future contingencies that cannot be known with certainty.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Reference
Atance, C. M., & O’Neill, D. K. (2005). The emergence of episodic future thinking in humans. Learning & Motivation, 36, 126–144.
Barkow, J. H., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (Eds.) (1992). The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bischof-Köhler, D. (1985). Zur Phylogenese menschlicher Motivation [On the phylogeny of human motivation]. In L. H. Eckensberger & E. D. Lantermann (Eds.), Emotion und Reflexivität (pp. 3–47). Vienna: Urban & Schwarzenberg.
Botzung, A., Denkova, E., & Manning, L. (2008). Experiencing past and future personal events: Functional neuroimaging evidence on the neural bases of mental time travel. Brain & Cognition, 66, 202–212.
Boyer, P. (2001). Religion explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought. New York: Basic Books.
Boyer, P. (2007). Why do we have episodic memories? Mental time-travel as a strategic incentive mechanism. Unpublished manuscript.
Brandimonte, M., Einstein, G. O., & McDaniel, M. A. (Eds.) (1996). Prospective memory: Theory and applications. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Brown, J. (Ed.) (1976). Recall and recognition. New York: Wiley.
Buckner, R. L., & Carroll, D. C. (2007). Self-projection and the brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 49–57.
Busby, J., & Suddendorf, T. (2005). Recalling yesterday and predicting tomorrow. Cognitive Development, 20, 362–372.
Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1987). From evolution to behavior: Evolutionary psychology as the missing link. In J. Dupré (Ed.), The latest on the best: Essays on evolution and optimality (pp. 277–306). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Craik, F. I. M., & Tulving, E. (1975). Depth of processing and the retention of words in episodic memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104, 268–294.
Dalla Barba, G. (2001). Memory, consciousness, and temporality. London: Kluwer.
Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Donald, M. (1991). Origins of the modern mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Donald, M. (2001). A mind so rare: The evolution of human consciousness. New York: Norton & Company.
Dunbar, R. (1996). Grooming, gossip, and the evolution of language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gibson, K. R., & Ingold, T. (Eds.) (1993). Tools, language, and cognition in human evolution. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hassabis, D., Kumaran, D., Vann, S. D., & Maguire, E. A. (2007). Patients with hippocampal amnesia cannot imagine new experiences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 1726–1731.
Hoerl, C., & McCormack, T. (Eds.) (2001). Time and memory: Issues in philosophy and psychology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Johnson, D. M. (2003). How history made the mind: The cultural origins of objective thinking. Chicago: Open Court.
Kang, S. H. K., McDermott, K. B., & Cohen, S. M. (2008). The mnemonic advantage of processing fitness-relevant information. Memory & Cognition, 36, 1151–1156.
Kenrick, D. T., Delton, A. W., Robertson, T. E., Becker, D. V., & Neuberg, S. L. (2007). How the mind warps: Processing disjunctions may elucidate ultimate functions. In J. P. Forgas, M. G. Haselton, & W. von Hippel (Eds.), Evolution and the social mind: Evolutionary psychology and social cognition (pp. 49–68). New York: Psychology Press.
Klein, S. B. (2007). Phylogeny and evolution: Implications for understanding the nature of a memory system. In H. L. Roediger III, Y. Dudai, & S. M. Fitzpatrick (Eds.), Science of memory: Concepts (pp. 377–381). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Klein, S. B., Cosmides, L., Gangi, C. E., Jackson, B., Tooby, J., & Costabile, K. A. (2009). Evolution and episodic memory: An analysis and demonstration of a social function of episodic memory. Social Cognition, 27, 283–319.
Klein, S. B., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J., & Chance, S. (2002). Decisions and the evolution of memory: Multiple systems, multiple functions. Psychological Review, 109, 306–329.
Klein, S. B., & Kihlstrom, J. F. (1986). Elaboration, organization, and the self-reference effect in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 115, 26–38.
Klein, S. B., & Loftus, J. (1988). The nature of self-referent encoding: The contributions of elaborative and organizational processes. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 55, 5–11.
Klein, S. B., & Loftus, J. (1990). Rethinking the role of organization in person memory: An independent trace storage model. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 59, 400–410.
Klein, S. B., Loftus, J., & Kihlstrom, J. F. (2002). Memory and temporal experience: The effects of episodic memory loss on an amnesic patient’s ability to remember the past and imagine the future. Social Cognition, 20, 353–379.
Lombardo, T. (2008). The evolution of future consciousness. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse.
Maner, J. K., Kenrick, D. T., Becker, D. V., Delton, A. W., Hofer, B., Wilbur, C. J., & Neuberg, S. L. (2003). Sexually selective cognition: Beauty captures the mind of the beholder. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 85, 1107–1120.
Miller, G. A., Galanter, E., & Pribram, K. H. (1960). Plans and the structure of behavior. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
Mithen, S. J. (1996). The prehistory of the mind: The cognitive origins of art, religion and science. London: Thames & Hudson.
Mumford, L. (1934). Technics and civilization. New York: Harcourt.
Nairne, J. S., & Pandeirada, J. N. S. (2008a). Adaptive memory: Is survival processing special? Journal of Memory & Language, 59, 377–385.
Nairne, J. S., & Pandeirada, J. N. S. (2008b). Adaptive memory: Remembering with a stone-age brain. Current Directions on Psychological Science, 17, 239–243.
Nairne, J. S., Pandeirada, J. N. S., & Thompson, S. R. (2008). Adaptive memory: The comparative value of survival processing. Psychological Science, 19, 176–180.
Nairne, J. S., Thompson, S. R., & Pandeirada, J. N. S. (2007). Adaptive memory: Survival processing enhances retention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 33, 263–273.
Passingham, R. E. (1982). The human primate. San Francisco: Freeman.
Rosenthal, R., & Rosnow, R. L. (1985). Contrast analysis: Focused comparisons in the analysis of variance. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Schacter, D. L., Addis, D. R., & Buckner, R. L. (2007). Remembering the past to imagine the future: The prospective brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 8, 657–661.
Schacter, D. L., Addis, D. R., & Buckner, R. L. (2008). Episodic simulation of future events: Concepts, data, and applications. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1124, 39–60.
Schacter, D. L., & Tulving, E. (Eds.) (1994). Memory systems 1994. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Schank, R. C., & Abelson, R. P. (1977). Scripts, plans, goals and understanding: An inquiry into human knowledge structures. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Sherry, D. F., & Schacter, D. L. (1987). The evolution of multiple memory systems. Psychological Review, 94,439–4544.
Srull, T. K. (1981). Person memory: Some tests of associative storage and retrieval models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning & Memory, 7, 440–463.
Suddendorf, T. (1994). Discovery of the fourth dimension: Mental time travel and human evolution. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.
Suddendorf, T., & Corballis, M. C. (1997). Mental time travel and the evolution of the human mind. Genetic, Social, & General Psychology Monographs, 123, 133–167.
Suddendorf, T., & Corballis, M. C. (2007). The evolution of foresight: What is mental time travel, and is it unique to humans? Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 30, 299–313.
Symons, C. S., & Johnson, B. T. (1997). The self-reference effect in memory: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 371–394.
Szpunar, K. K., & McDermott, K. B. (2008). Episodic future thought and its relation to remembering: Evidence from ratings of subjective experience. Consciousness & Cognition, 17, 330–334.
Szpunar, K. K., Watson, J. M., & McDermott, K. B. (2007). Neural substrates of envisioning the future. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 642–647.
Tulving, E. (1972). Episodic and semantic memory. In E. Tulving & W. Donaldson (Eds.), Organization of memory (pp. 381–403). New York: Academic Press.
Tulving, E. (1983). Elements of episodic memory. New York: Oxford University Press.
Tulving, E. (1985). Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychology, 26, 1–12.
Tulving, E. (2002). Chronesthesia: Conscious awareness of subjective time. In D. T. Stuss & R. T. Knight (Eds.), Principles of frontal lobe function (pp. 311–325). New York: Oxford University Press.
Tulving, E., & Craik, F. I. M. (Eds.) (2000). The Oxford handbook of memory. New York: Oxford University Press.
Tulving, E., & Lepage, M. (2000). Where in the brain is the awareness of one’s past? In D. L. Schacter & E. Scarry (Eds.), Memory, brain, and belief (pp. 208–228). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Weiler, J. A., & Daum, I. (2008). Mental time travel: The neurocognitive basis of future thinking. Fortschritte der Neurologie · Psychiatrie, 76, 539–548.
Weinstein, Y., Bugg, J. M., Roediger, H. L., III (2008). Can the survival recall advantage be explained by basic memory processes? Memory & Cognition, 36, 913–919.
Wheeler, M. A., Stuss, D. T., & Tulving, E. (1997). Toward a theory of episodic memory: The frontal lobes and autonoetic consciousness. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 331–354.
Williams, G. C. (1966). Adaptation and natural selection: A critique of some current evolutionary thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Klein, S.B., Robertson, T.E. & Delton, A.W. Facing the future: Memory as an evolved system for planning future acts. Memory & Cognition 38, 13–22 (2010). https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.38.1.13
Received:
Revised:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.38.1.13