Component processes underlying future thinking

D’Argembeau, Arnaud; Ortoleva, Claudia; Jumentier, Sabrina; Linden, Martial Van der

doi:10.3758/mc.38.6.809

Cited by 131 publications

(139 citation statements)

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“…The role of personal relevance in autonoetic experience is also suggested by studies showing that the degree to which people report feelings of pre-experience and mental time travel when imagining future events is related to individual differences in future time perspective (i.e., a general concern for the future, including a focus on planning and future goals; Arnold, McDermott, & Szpunar, 2011b) and self-consciousness (i.e., the tendency to think about one 's beliefs, aspirations, and values;D'Argembeau, Ortoleva, Jumentier, & Van der Linden, 2010).…”

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confidence: 91%

The role of personal goals in autonoetic experience when imagining future events

Lehner

D’Argembeau

2016

Consciousness and Cognition

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Although autonoetic experience-a sense of mental time travel-has been considered as the hallmark of episodic future thinking, what determines this subjective feeling is not yet fully understood. Here, we investigated the role of autobiographical knowledge by manipulating the relevance of imagined events for personal goals. Participants were asked to imagine three types of events (goal-related future events, experimenter-provided future events, and atemporal events) and to assess various characteristics of their mental representations. The results showed that the three types of events were represented with similar levels of detail and vividness. Importantly, however, goal-related future events were associated with a stronger autonoetic experience. Furthermore, autonoetic experience was significantly predicted by the importance of imagined events for personal goals. These findings suggest that the subjective feeling of pre-experiencing one's personal future in part depends on the extent to which imagined events can be placed in an autobiographical context.

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confidence: 91%

The role of personal goals in autonoetic experience when imagining future events

Lehner

D’Argembeau

2016

Consciousness and Cognition

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“…D'Argembeau et al [25] examined in young adults the contribution of some executive function (verbal and semantic fluency) and working memory (measured with the letter-number sequencing task taken from WAIS III, [27]) tasks to different dimension of episodic future thinking performance, i.e., fluency (e.g., how many unique future events can a person generate in 1 min), specificity (e.g., whether a person can construct a unique potential future event), and details (e.g., how many specific episodic details can a person produce about a possible future event). D'Argembeau et al [25] reported that the factor representing executive processes was the only independent predictor of autobiographical fluency, autobiographical specificity, and the amount of episodic details.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…For example, it has been demonstrated, in young adults, that executive processes may support the strategic aspects of retrieving autobiographical details [24] and recombining them into future scenarios [25]. Among the various executive processes, Suddendorf and Corballis [26] have suggested that remembering past events and imagining future ones require a processing space where information is temporarily maintained and manipulated (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…D'Argembeau et al [25] reported that the factor representing executive processes was the only independent predictor of autobiographical fluency, autobiographical specificity, and the amount of episodic details. More recently, Hill and Emery [28] deepened the role of working memory for EFT, adapting the distinction made by D'Argembeau et al [25] and presenting four measures of WM. Hill and Emery [28] demonstrated that the WM composite score was significantly correlated with future episodic specificity, over and above the relationship between future and past specificity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Episodic future thinking: the role of working memory and inhibition on age-related differences

et al. 2015

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The ability to remember past events and imagine future events (episodic future thinking-EFT) has been shown to decline with aging. However, only few studies have analyzed the cognitive mechanisms involved in EFT in both young and older adults. The present study examined the role of working memory and inhibition on age-related differences between young and older adults in EFT, in response to short sentences reflecting common events, some of which were repeated in both conditions (past and future). Thirty-seven young and 36 older adults completed an adapted version of the autobiographical interview, in which sentences were presented. Results showed that processing resources explained a significant part of the variance in the amount of details; in particular, inhibition explained the amount of external details produced in the future condition. In addition, using sentences, the older group did not differ from the young adults in terms of the proportion of internal details recalled in the past condition, whereas they produced a lower proportion of internal details in the future condition. The effect of using structured material was reinforced by repeating some sentences in the past. Further, only older adults rated the remembered episodes as more emotionally salient and relevant than the imagined ones. Age-related differences between young and older adults in EFT appear to depend on the type of material used, on basic mechanisms of cognition, and are characterized by both quantitative and qualitative differences.

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“…In particular, damage to prefrontal cortex typically affects cognitive control and monitoring of memory retrieval (Burgess & Shallice, 1996;Simons & Spiers). There is evidence from healthy (D'Argembeau, Ortoleva, Jumentier & Van der Linden,, 2010;Cole, Morrison & Conway, 2013) and brain-damaged individuals (Berryhill, Picasso, Arnold et al, 2010;de Vito, Gamboz, Brandimonte et al, 2012) that executive function also has a role in EFT. In a study of individuals with Parkinsons disease, patients produced future events with reduced episodic detail, especially when novel event constructions were required (de Vito et al, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Amnesia and future thinking: Exploring the role of memory in the quantity and quality of episodic future thoughts

Cole

Morrison

Barak³

et al. 2015

British J Clinic Psychol

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ObjectivesTo examine the impact of memory accessibility on episodic future thinking.DesignSingle‐case study of neurological patient HCM and an age‐matched comparison group of neurologically Healthy Controls.MethodsWe administered a full battery of tests assessing general intelligence, memory, and executive functioning. To assess autobiographical memory, the Autobiographical Memory Interview (Kopelman, Wilson, & Baddeley, 1990. The Autobiographical Memory Interview. Bury St. Edmunds, UK: Thames Valley Test Company) was administered. The Past Episodic and Future Episodic sections of Dalla Barba's Confabulation Battery (Dalla Barba, 1993, Cogn. Neuropsychol., 1, 1) and a specifically tailored Mental Time Travel Questionnaire were administered to assess future thinking in HCM and age‐matched controls.ResultsHCM presented with a deficit in forming new memories (anterograde amnesia) and recalling events from before the onset of neurological impairment (retrograde amnesia). HCM's autobiographical memory impairments are characterized by a paucity of memories from Recent Life. In comparison with controls, two features of his future thoughts are apparent: Reduced episodic future thinking and outdated content of his episodic future thoughts.ConclusionsThis article suggests neuropsychologists should look beyond popular conceptualizations of the past–future relation in amnesia via focussing on reduced future thinking. Investigating both the quantity and quality of future thoughts produced by amnesic patients may lead to developments in understanding the complex nature of future thinking disorders resulting from memory impairments.Practitioner points We highlight the clinical importance of examining the content of future thoughts in amnesic patients, rather than only its quantitative reduction. We propose an explanation of how quantitative and qualitative aspects of future thinking could be affected by amnesia. This could provide a useful approach to understand clinical cases of impaired prospection. Limitations Systematic group investigations are required to fully examine our hypothesis. Although the current study utilized typical future thinking measures, these may be limited and we highlight the need to develop clinically relevant measures of prospection.

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Component processes underlying future thinking

Cited by 131 publications

References 55 publications

The role of personal goals in autonoetic experience when imagining future events

The role of personal goals in autonoetic experience when imagining future events

Episodic future thinking: the role of working memory and inhibition on age-related differences

Amnesia and future thinking: Exploring the role of memory in the quantity and quality of episodic future thoughts

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