The temporal compression of events during episodic future thinking

Jeunehomme, Olivier; Leroy, Nathan; D’Argembeau, Arnaud

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104416

Cited by 6 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Furthermore, memories contained a higher density of recalled actions (i.e., more actions recalled per unit of time of the actual video duration) in the ellipsis condition than in the complete video condition and recalled actions in the complete condition mainly referred to parts of the videos that were retained in the ellipsis versions. In line with previous studies (Folvile et al, 2020; Jeunehomme et al, 2020; Jeunehomme & D’Argembeau, 2019), the rate of temporal compression during mental replay was predicted by the density of recalled actions. Importantly, however, estimates of the time needed to remember an action were similar in the two conditions, showing that our manipulation influenced the quantity of recalled actions but not the representation of individual actions per se.…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 90%

“…Previous studies on memory for real-life events have shown that the rate of event compression in memory is inversely related to the density of recalled experience units (Folville et al, 2020; Jeunehomme & D’Argembeau, 2019; Jeunehomme et al, 2020. Although it was not planned in our preregistered analyses, we examined whether we could replicate this result using video stimuli.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…This sample size was determined a priori using G*Power 3 (Faul et al, 2007) to have a statistical power of .80 (with an alpha of .05, two-tailed) to detect between-group differences with an effect size of d = .60. The effect size was estimated by computing the mean effect size observed in previous studies comparing differences in temporal compression rates across different types of events (Jeunehomme & D’Argembeau, 2019, 2020). We opted for a between-subjects design because presenting both experimental conditions to the same participants could potentially induce inferences on experimenter demands (e.g., participants might come to believe that memories should be shorter for edited than complete videos), which we wanted to avoid.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Memory editing: The role of temporal discontinuities in the compression of events in episodic memory editing.

Jeunehomme¹,

D’Argembeau²

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Why does it take less time to remember an event than to experience it? Recent evidence suggests that the dynamic unfolding of events is temporally compressed in memory representations, but the exact nature of this compression mechanism remains unclear. The present study tested two possible mechanisms. First, it could be that memories compress the course of events into a sequence of moments or slices of prior experience, while omitting other segments, akin to edited films that give condensed accounts of events using sequences of separate shots (referred to as the discontinuity hypothesis). Alternatively, it may be that the entire stream of information is represented but is mentally replayed at a faster speed than the original experience (referred to as the acceleration hypothesis). In two experiments, these hypotheses were tested by comparing mental replay times for continuous movies depicting naturalistic events and edited versions of the same movies in which less informative parts were removed to mimic the presumed structure of memory representations according to the discontinuity hypothesis. We found that memories for videos in which less informative segments were replaced by temporal ellipses (Experiment 1) or by black screens of the same duration as removed segments (Experiment 2) were less compressed and contained a higher density of recalled units than did memories for complete videos. These results support the discontinuity hypothesis and suggest that segments of time that are redundant and predictable are omitted in episodic memory, while more informative segments are selectively retained to represent the unfolding of events.

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Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Memory editing: The role of temporal discontinuities in the compression of events in episodic memory editing.

Jeunehomme¹,

D’Argembeau²

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Our findings suggest that temporal compression, based on the bias parameters, is coupled to the degree of semantic associations between the encoded items. This effect has been reported when participants recall the temporal contexts of narrative stimuli (Frisoni et al, 2021(Frisoni et al, , 2022Furman et al, 2007) and real-life actions during environmental navigation (Jeunehomme et al, 2020), and has been explained by the forgetting of "time slices" of an experience (D'Argembeau et al, 2022). Our findings support a complementary account, in which the semantic relatedness merges the temporal tags of individual items in memory.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Encoding conditions shape temporal memory precision by modulating temporal uncertainty and temporal bias

Ven¹,

Raissle²,

Hoogen³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Temporal memory about when in the past something happened is suggested to be reconstructed rather than recalled. Participants usually show a degree of mismatch between remembered and actual temporal position of an event. However, recent studies showed markedly different results, including both relatively low temporal precision, for visual objects presented earlier in a series, and relatively high temporal precision, for movie scenes shown at the start of a movie. One explanation could be the use of different stimulus materials, for which participants would employ different cognitive encoding or mnemonic strategies. However, a more parsimonious explanation would be that temporal judgments arise from a common mechanism, regardless of stimulus material or context. In the current manuscript, we reanalysed the results of two previously published experiments and investigated the effect of boundary segmentation and semantic relatedness during encoding in two new experiments. We found that participants showed more temporal uncertainty when the encoded visual objects and contexts were unrelated. Further, we found that increasing the semantic associations during encoding diminished temporal uncertainty but increased temporal underestimation bias, which we interpret as an indication of temporal compression. A simple computational model in which temporal judgment is based on a Gaussian process defined by temporal uncertainty (dispersion) and temporal bias (location) replicated the empirical data of all four experiments, suggesting that patterns of temporal errors observed in different experiments arise from a common mechanism. The model further underscores that semantic relatedness between items decreases temporal uncertainty but enhances temporal compression. These findings have important ramifications for how we memorize the temporal structure of events.

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“…SWRs are highly conserved across all mammals and, according to Buzsáki (2015), constitute the highest synchrony event in the mammalian brain as they affect activity in a wide range of brain areas ( Joo & Frank, 2018). SWR sequences occur on a compressed timescale but are sensitive to the spatiotemporal properties of the original experience (for evidence of temporal compression of episodic simulation in humans, see Jeunehomme et al, 2020). For example, Davidson et al (2009) showed that replay duration is sensitive to the length of the track being replayed, roughly proceeding at 8 m per second.…”

Section: Hippocampal Sharp-wave Ripples Theta Rhythm and Episodic Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Internally Triggered Experiences of Hedonic Valence in Nonhuman Animals: Cognitive and Welfare Considerations

Mahr

Fischer

2022

Perspect Psychol Sci

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Do any nonhuman animals have hedonically valenced experiences not directly caused by stimuli in their current environment? Do they, like us humans, experience anticipated or previously experienced pains and pleasures as respectively painful and pleasurable? We review evidence from comparative neuroscience about hippocampus-dependent simulation in relation to this question. Hippocampal sharp-wave ripples and theta oscillations have been found to instantiate previous and anticipated experiences. These hippocampal activations coordinate with neural reward and fear centers as well as sensory and cortical areas in ways that are associated with conscious episodic mental imagery in humans. Moreover, such hippocampal “re- and preplay” has been found to contribute to instrumental decision making, the learning of value representations, and the delay of rewards in rats. The functional and structural features of hippocampal simulation are highly conserved across mammals. This evidence makes it reasonable to assume that internally triggered experiences of hedonic valence (IHVs) are pervasive across (at least) all mammals. This conclusion has important welfare implications. Most prominently, IHVs act as a kind of “welfare multiplier” through which the welfare impacts of any given experience of pain or pleasure are increased through each future retrieval. However, IHVs also have practical implications for welfare assessment and cause prioritization.

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The temporal compression of events during episodic future thinking

Cited by 6 publications

References 31 publications

Memory editing: The role of temporal discontinuities in the compression of events in episodic memory editing.

Memory editing: The role of temporal discontinuities in the compression of events in episodic memory editing.

Encoding conditions shape temporal memory precision by modulating temporal uncertainty and temporal bias

Internally Triggered Experiences of Hedonic Valence in Nonhuman Animals: Cognitive and Welfare Considerations

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