Episodic foresight and schizophrenia

Abstract

People with schizophrenia have known difficulties with episodic foresight, and it now appears that those difficulties extend to the performance of foresightful preparatory behaviours. Because preparatory behaviours are central to routine and adaptive planning, difficulties with episodic foresight may contribute to or be a result of some of the functional difficulties experienced by people with schizophrenia. Further research is needed to determine whether interventions might be developed for people with reduced episodic foresight. Interventions may include the use of remedial tools that support and encourage the performance of foresightful behaviour, or cognitive training programs that actively improve the ability and propensity to exercise foresight independently.

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). …”

Personality traits are associated with the valence of future imagined events in individuals with schizophrenia

“…Concerning schizophrenia and episodic foresight, it has been shown that individuals with schizophrenia are impaired in imagining specific and pre-experiencing future events (Chen et al, 2016;D'Argembeau et al, 2008;de Oliveira et al, 2009), which can be characterized by a "loss of future" (Ingvar, 1985). They experience less vivid representations of personally significant future imagined events in comparison to non-clinical controls (Allé et al, 2016) and these difficulties extend to the performance of foresightful preparatory behaviors (Lyons et al, 2016). However, few studies regarding the emotional valence of future imagined events have been conducted among schizophrenia patients.…”

Foresight in Sight

“…However, a major limitation of this study is that the foresight of patients was subjectively rated by clinicians. Overcoming this limitation, in an interesting study, Lyons et al [4] compared a group of patients with schizophrenia with healthy controls on a measure of episodic foresight that needed the participants to identify a problem, self-generate a resolution, and execute the intention at the right juncture. Findings show that patients with schizophrenia performed poorly as compared to the healthy controls.…”

“…There is however, a dearth of performance-based measures of foresight in adults. Virtual week-foresight is one recently developed measure that looks at everyday situations where episodic foresight is required to problem solve [4]. These everyday situations are presented in an electronic board game.…”

“…These everyday situations are presented in an electronic board game. Further, to our knowledge, behavioral/performance based measures have been used in one study, to examine foresight in schizophrenia [4].…”