The temporal orientation of memory: It's time for a change of direction.

Abstract

a b s t r a c tCommon wisdom, philosophical analysis and psychological research share the view that memory is subjectively positioned toward the past: specifically, memory enables one to become re-acquainted with the objects and events of his or her past. In this paper I call this assumption into question. As I hope to show, memory has been designed by natural selection not to relive the past, but rather to anticipate and plan for future contingencies -a decidedly future-oriented mode of subjective temporality. This is not to say memory makes no reference to the past. But, I argue, past-oriented subjectivity is a by-product of a system designed by natural selection to help us face and respond to the "now and the next". I discuss the implications of the proposed temporal realignment for research agendas as well as the potential limitations of measures designed to explore memory by focusing on its retentive capabilities.

A taxonomy of prospection: Introducing an organizational framework for future-oriented cognition

“…In relation to future thinking, cognitive neuroscientists and neuropsychologists have generated considerable evidence showing that the capacity to remember past events and imagine future events is closely related, spurring the suggestion that event details can be flexibly extracted and recombined from memory in the service of simulating new events that may take place in the future (20). Here, we extend this proposed relation between memory and future thinking to highlight, as others have done as well (4,11,12,21,22), that general knowledge about the world (semantic knowledge) may also lay the groundwork for allowing us to reason about what the world may be like in the future. However, much work is needed to show these proposed relations between different types of knowledge and future thinking.…”

Autonoetic consciousness: Reconsidering the role of episodic memory in future-oriented self-projection

“…Under nonlaboratory conditions, the aspect of autonoetic consciousness elicited by acts of anticipation and planning often is 180 degrees displaced from that found when one undergoes recollective experience (positioning the person toward what will happen, not what previously transpired; e.g., Boyer, 2009;Klein, 2013bKlein, , 2014bTulving, 2005). Indeed, as is discussed in the section "Autonoetic consciousness is not intrinsic to episodic memory", it is not clear what adaptive function a temporal orientation toward the past (i.e., that associated with episodic recollection) serves with respect to future-oriented mentation.…”

Securing the future by remembering the past: But just when does this past and future begin to develop?

“…Although, as Klein (2013) opines, we may all eventually exhibit episodic foresight, the developmental course of the emergence of this adaptive memory effect may vary considerably (also see Howe & Otgaar, 2013). 4 Both Klein (2013) and Tulving (2005) suggest that episodic memory (remembering the past) and episodic foresight (anticipating the future) are accompanied by autonoetic awareness (a feeling that one is reliving the past or mentally travelling into the future, respectively). Of course, such a requirement rules out nonverbal organisms (nonhuman animals and preverbal humans) because there is no way for them to report their conscious experiences when remembering the past or planning for the future.…”