Do strategic processes contribute to the specificity of future simulation in depression?

Abstract

Future simulation may be particularly vulnerable to executive dysfunction in individuals with current/previous depressive symptoms, with evidence of a differential reduction in the specificity of future events. Strategic retrieval abilities were associated with the degree of future event specificity whereas levels of rumination and avoidance were not. Given that the ability to generate specific simulations of the future is associated with enhanced psychological wellbeing, problem solving and coping behaviours, understanding how to increase the specificity of future simulations in depression is an important direction for future research and clinical practice. Interventions focusing on improving the ability to engage strategic processes may be a fruitful avenue for increasing the ability to imagine specific future events in depression. The autobiographical event tasks have somewhat limited ecological validity as they do not account for the many social and environmental cues present in everyday life; the development of more clinically-relevant tasks may be of benefit to this area of study.

Anticipatory Pleasure for Future Experiences in Schizophrenia-Spectrum Disorders and Major Depression: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…Future studies on anticipatory pleasure should report measures of cognitive functioning, and particularly executive functioning which seems linked to the higher-order task of episodic simulation (Addis, Hach, & Tippett, 2016). Interestingly, the severity of symptoms, and in particular negative symptoms, did not account for heterogeneity.…”

Anticipatory pleasure for future experiences in schizophrenia spectrum disorders and major depression: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…These findings provide some evidence that deficits in cognitive functioning might account, in part, for deficits in anticipatory pleasure in schizophrenia spectrum disorders, possibly through difficulties in mentally constructing and simulating possible future experiences. Future studies on anticipatory pleasure should report measures of cognitive functioning, and particularly executive functioning which seems linked to the higher‐order task of episodic simulation (Addis, Hach, & Tippett, ). Interestingly, the severity of symptoms, and in particular negative symptoms, did not account for heterogeneity.…”

Episodic future thinking: mechanisms and functions

“…For example, studies that have used the AI to compare healthy older adults with young adults consistently show that older adults produce fewer internal/episodic details and more external/semantic details for both remembered past events and imagined future events, suggesting a common role of episodic memory in both event types (for review of early studies, see 16, and for recent and related evidence, see 5, 17–21). Reductions in episodic detail for both past and future events using the AI and related procedures have also been documented in various patient populations, including in recent studies of patients with depression (22), post-traumatic stress disorder (23), amnesic syndrome (24–27; but see 28 for relatively preserved future imagining in amnesics), Alzheimer’s disease (29–30), unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy (31), schizophrenia (32), prefrontal lesions (33), and long-term opiate users (34). …”