Remembering possible times: Memory for details of past, future, and counterfactual simulations.

Abstract

People's capacity to mentally simulate future events (episodic future thinking) as well as what could have occurred in the past but did not (episodic counterfactual thinking) critically depends on their capacity to retrieve episodic memories. All 3 mental simulations are likely adaptive in that they involve rehearsing possible scenarios with the goal of improving future performance. However, the extent to which these mental simulations are useful at a later time depends on how well they are later remembered. Unfortunately, little is known about how such simulations are remembered. In the current study, we explored this issue by asking participants to retrieve episodic memories and generate future and counterfactual simulations in response to 4 cues: particular places, people, objects, and times. A day later participants received 3 of the 4 cues and were asked to recall the remaining 1. Our results indicate that people and locations are equally well remembered, regardless of the temporal orientation of the mental simulation. In contrast, objects in future simulations are recalled less frequently than are those in memories. Time was poorly remembered across conditions but especially when remembering a future or a counterfactual simulation. In light of these results, we discuss how temporal information may be incorporated into our hypothetical episodic simulations.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away: How temporal are episodic contents?

“…Previous studies have shown differences in ratings of difficulty, detail, emotional arousal, or novelty between remembered and imagined events (e.g. Johnson et al, 1988;D'Argembeau & van der Linden, 2004;Berntsen & Bohn, 2010;McDonough & Gallo, 2010;De Brigard et al, 2020). However, fewer studies have investigated whether a similar difference can be found between past and future imaginations.…”

“…To address the question of how temporality relates to episodic contents, we adapted an experimental design by McDonough & Gallo (2010; for similar procedures see De Brigard et al, 2020;McLelland et al, 2015; for related work on multi-element event recall see Horner & Burgess, 2013). These authors asked participants to generate and later recall episodic memories and future imaginations.…”

“…On the other hand, there has been some research specifically investigating the construction of simulations of the future with respect to their temporal features (e.g. D 'Argembeau & Mathy, 2011;D'Argembeau & Demblon, 2012;De Brigard et al, 2020;Ernst et al, 2019;Ernst & D'Argembeau, 2017). Similar to the dating of episodic memories, the specification of the future time of episodic simulations seems to draw on hierarchically organized layers of general autobiographical knowledge (Conway, Justice & D'Argembeau, 2019;Conway, 2005;Conway & Pleyell-Pearce, 2000;D'Argembeau, 2020).…”

Mnemicity vs. Temporality: Distinguishing between components of episodic representations

“…In order to address the question whether the temporal orientation of an episode is separable from its mnemicity, we utilized a source memory paradigm with two parts, similar to previous research by McDonough and Gallo (2010;2013) andDe Brigard et al, (2020;see also McLelland et al, 2015). In the first part of our procedure (see Figure 1, "Simulation Encoding Task"), we asked participants to generate three kinds of episodic simulations in response to object word cues: (1) imagined future events, (2) imagined past events (i.e.…”

“…Note that our design therefore differs in important ways from those of the studies by McDonough and Gallo (2010;2013) andDe Brigard et al (2020). While McDonough and Gallo were also interested in asking whether episodic representations can be successfully distinguished along the lines of their temporal orientation, the temporality factor was confounded with mnemicity in their design.…”