Mental time travel

In psychology, mental time travel is the capacity to mentally reconstruct personal events from the past (episodic memory) as well as to imagine possible scenarios in the future (episodic foresight/episodic future thinking). The term was coined by Thomas Suddendorf and Michael Corballis,[1] building on Endel Tulving's work on episodic memory.[2] (Tulving proposed the alternative term chronesthesia.[3])

Mental time travel has been studied by psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists, philosophers and in a variety of other academic disciplines.[4][5] Major areas of interest include the nature of the relationship between memory and foresight,[6][7] the evolution of the ability (including whether it is uniquely human or shared with other animals),[8][9] its development in young children,[10][11] its underlying brain mechanisms,[12][13] as well as its potential links to consciousness,[14] the self,[15] and free will.[16]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference pmid9204544 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Tulving E (1985). "Memory and Consciousness". Canadian Psychology. 26: 1–12. doi:10.1037/h0080017.
  3. ^ Tulving E (2002). "Chronesthesia: Conscious Awareness of Subjective Time". Principles of Frontal Lobe Function. pp. 311–325. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195134971.003.0020. ISBN 978-0-19-513497-1.
  4. ^ Bulley A (2018). "The History and Future of Human Prospection". Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture. 2: 75. doi:10.26613/esic.2.1.75. S2CID 134294187.
  5. ^ Klein SB (January 2013). "The complex act of projecting oneself into the future". Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science. 4 (1): 63–79. doi:10.1002/wcs.1210. PMID 26304175.
  6. ^ Suddendorf T (January 2010). "Episodic memory versus episodic foresight: Similarities and differences". Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science. 1 (1): 99–107. doi:10.1002/wcs.23. PMID 26272843.
  7. ^ Klein SB (2018). "Autonoetic consciousness: Reconsidering the role of episodic memory in future-oriented self-projection". Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. 69 (2): 381–401. doi:10.1080/17470218.2015.1007150. PMID 25606713. S2CID 14444260.
  8. ^ Suddendorf T (2013). The gap: the science of what separates us from other animals. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-03014-9.[page needed]
  9. ^ Cheke LG, Clayton NS (November 2010). "Mental time travel in animals". Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science. 1 (6): 915–930. doi:10.1002/wcs.59. PMID 26271786.
  10. ^ Suddendorf T, Redshaw J (August 2013). "The development of mental scenario building and episodic foresight". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1296 (1): 135–53. Bibcode:2013NYASA1296..135S. doi:10.1111/nyas.12189. PMID 23855564. S2CID 33641357.
  11. ^ Atance CM, o'Neill DK (2005). "The emergence of episodic future thinking in humans". Learning and Motivation. 36 (2): 126–144. doi:10.1016/j.lmot.2005.02.003.
  12. ^ Schacter DL, Addis DR, Hassabis D, Martin VC, Spreng RN, Szpunar KK (November 2012). "The future of memory: remembering, imagining, and the brain". Neuron. 76 (4): 677–94. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2012.11.001. PMC 3815616. PMID 23177955.
  13. ^ Irish M (2016). "Semantic Memory as the Essential Scaffold for Future-Oriented Mental Time Travel". In Michaelian K, Klein SB, Szpunar KK (eds.). Seeing the Future: Theoretical Perspectives on Future-oriented Mental Time Travel. Oxford University Press. pp. 389–408. ISBN 978-0-19-024153-7.
  14. ^ D'Argembeau A, Van der Linden M (September 2012). "Predicting the phenomenology of episodic future thoughts". Consciousness and Cognition. 21 (3): 1198–206. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2012.05.004. hdl:2268/130764. PMID 22742997. S2CID 14972501.
  15. ^ D'Argembeau A, Lardi C, Van der Linden M (2012). "Self-defining future projections: exploring the identity function of thinking about the future". Memory. 20 (2): 110–20. doi:10.1080/09658211.2011.647697. hdl:2268/107158. PMID 22292616. S2CID 9399136.
  16. ^ Seligman ME, Railton P, Baumeister RF, Sripada C (March 2013). "Navigating into the Future or Driven by the Past". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 8 (2): 119–41. doi:10.1177/1745691612474317. PMID 26172493. S2CID 17506436.