Reconstructing the times of past and future personal events

[en] Humans have the remarkable ability to mentally travel through past and future times. However, while memory for the times of past events has been much investigated, little is known about how imagined future events are temporally located. Using a think-aloud protocol, we found that the temporal location of past and future events is rarely directly accessed, but instead mostly relies on reconstructive and inferential strategies. References to lifetime periods and factual knowledge (about the self, others, and the world) were most frequently used to determine the temporal location of both past and future events. Event details (e.g., places, persons, or weather conditions) were also used, but mainly for past events. Finally, the results showed that events whose temporal location was directly accessed were judged more important for personal goals. Together, these findings shed new light on the mechanisms involved in locating personal events in past and future times.

Disciplines :

Theoretical & cognitive psychology

Author, co-author :

Ben Malek, Mohamed Hedi ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Form. doct. sc. psycho. & éduc. (paysage)

Berna, Fabrice

D'Argembeau, Arnaud ; Université de Liège > Département de Psychologie > Psychopathologie cognitive

Language :

English

Title :

Reconstructing the times of past and future personal events

Publication date :

2017

Journal title :

Memory

ISSN :

0965-8211

eISSN :

1464-0686

Publisher :

Taylor & Francis Ltd, Basingstoke, United Kingdom

Volume :

Pages :

1402-1411

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Available on ORBi :

since 18 May 2017

Statistics

Number of views

200 (15 by ULiège)

Number of downloads

39 (3 by ULiège)

More statistics

Scopus citations^®

Scopus citations^®
without self-citations

OpenCitations

OpenAlex citations

Bibliography

Arbuthnott, K. D., & Brown, A. A., (2009). The use of autobiographical knowledge in age estimation. Memory, 17(3), 279–287. doi: 10.1080/09658210802665829
Atance, C. M., & O’Neill, D. K., (2001). Episodic future thinking. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5(12), 533–539. doi: 10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01804-0
Berntsen, D., & Rubin, D. C., (2004). Cultural life scripts structure recall from autobiographical memory. Memory & Cognition, 32(3), 427–442. doi: 10.3758/BF03195836
Brown, N. R., (1990). Organization of public events in long-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 119(3), 297–314. doi: 10.1037/0096-3445.119.3.297
Brown, N. R., (2016). Transition theory: A minimalist perspective on the organization of autobiographical memory. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 5(2), 128–134. doi: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2016.03.005
Brown, N. R., Schweickart, O., & Svob, C., (2016). The effect of collective transitions on the organization and contents of autobiographical memory: A transition theory perspective. The American Journal of Psychology, 129(3), 259–282. doi: 10.5406/amerjpsyc.129.3.0259
Cole, S. N., Staugaard, S. R., & Berntsen, D., (2016). Inducing involuntary and voluntary mental time travel using a laboratory paradigm. Memory & Cognition, 44(3), 376–389. doi: 10.3758/s13421-015-0564-9
Conway, M. A., (2005). Memory and the self. Journal of Memory and Language, 53(4), 594–628. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2005.08.005
Conway, M. A., & Pleydell-Pearce, C. W., (2000). The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system. Psychological Review, 107(2), 261–288. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.107.2.261
de Vito, S., Gamboz, N., & Brandimonte, M. A., (2012). What differentiates episodic future thinking from complex scene imagery? Consciousness and Cognition, 21(2), 813–823. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2012.01.013
Desrochers, A., & Thompson, G. L., (2009). Subjective frequency and imageability ratings for 3,600 French nouns. Behavior Research Methods, 41(2), 546–557. doi: 10.3758/BRM.41.2.546
D’Argembeau, A., (2015). Knowledge structures involved in episodic future thinking. In A., Feeney & V. A., Thompson (Eds.), Reasoning as memory (pp. 128–145). London: Taylor & Francis.
D’Argembeau, A., & Demblon, J., (2012). On the representational systems underlying prospection: Evidence from the event-cueing paradigm. Cognition, 125(2), 160–167. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2012.07.008
D’Argembeau, A., Jeunehomme, O., Majerus, S., Bastin, C., & Salmon, E., (2015). The neural basis of temporal order processing in past and future thought. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27(1), 185–197. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_00680
D’Argembeau, A., & Mathy, A., (2011). Tracking the construction of episodic future thoughts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140(2), 258–271. doi: 10.1037/a0022581
D’Argembeau, A., & Van der Linden, M., (2012). Predicting the phenomenology of episodic future thoughts. Consciousness and Cognition, 21(3), 1198–1206. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2012.05.004
Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A.-G., & Buchner, A., (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39(2), 175–191. doi: 10.3758/BF03193146
Flexser, A. J., & Bower, G. H., (1974). How frequency affects recency judgments: A model for recency discrimination. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 103(4), 706–716. doi: 10.1037/h0037194
Fox, M. C., Ericsson, K. A., & Best, R., (2011). Do procedures for verbal reporting of thinking have to be reactive? A meta-analysis and recommendations for best reporting methods. Psychological Bulletin, 137(2), 316–344. doi: 10.1037/a0021663
Friedman, W. J., (1987). A follow-up to “scale effects in memory for the time of events”: The earthquake study. Memory & Cognition, 15(6), 518–520. doi: 10.3758/BF03198386
Friedman, W. J., (1993). Memory for the time of past events. Psychological Bulletin, 113(1), 44–66. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.113.1.44
Friedman, W. J., (2000). The development of children’s knowledge of the times of future events. Child Development, 71(4), 913–932. doi: 10.1111/1467-8624.00199
Friedman, W. J., (2001). Memory processes underlying humans’ chronological sense of the past. In C., Hoerl & T., McCormack (Eds.), Time and memory: Issues in philosophy and psychology (pp. 139–167). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Friedman, W. J., (2002). Children’s knowledge of the future distances of daily activities and annual events. Journal of Cognition and Development, 3(3), 333–356. doi: 10.1207/S15327647JCD0303_4
Friedman, W. J., (2004). Time in autobiographical memory. Social Cognition, 22(5), 591–605. doi: 10.1521/soco.22.5.591.50766
Friedman, W. J., (2005). Developmental and cognitive perspectives on humans’ sense of the times of past and future events. Learning and Motivation, 36(2), 145–158. doi: 10.1016/j.lmot.2005.02.005
Friedman, W. J., (2007). The role of reminding in long-term memory for temporal order. Memory & Cognition, 35(1), 66–72. doi: 10.3758/BF03195943
Friedman, W. J., & Wilkins, A. J., (1985). Scale effects in memory for the time of events. Memory & Cognition, 13(2), 168–175. doi: 10.3758/BF03197009
Hasher, L., & Zacks, R. T., (1979). Automatic and effortful processes in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 108(3), 356–388. doi: 10.1037/0096-3445.108.3.356
Hassabis, D., Kumaran, D., Vann, S. D., & Maguire, E. A., (2007). Patients with hippocampal amnesia cannot imagine new experiences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(5), 1726–1731. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0610561104
Jack, F., Friedman, W., Reese, E., & Zajac, R., (2016). Age-related differences in memory for time, temporal reconstruction, and the availability and use of temporal landmarks. Cognitive Development, 37, 53–66. doi: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2015.12.003
Jeunehomme, O., & D’Argembeau, A., (2016). Prevalence and determinants of direct and generative modes of production of episodic future thoughts in the word cueing paradigm. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69(2), 254–272. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2014.993663
Jeunehomme, O., & D’Argembeau, A., (2017). Accessibility and characteristics of memories of the future. Memory, 25, 666–676. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2016.1205096
Michaelian, K., (2016). Against discontinuism: Mental time travel and our knowledge of past and future events. In K., Michaelian, S. B., Klein, & K. K., Szpunar (Eds.), Seeing the future: Theoretical perspectives on future-oriented mental time travel (pp. 62–92). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nourkova, V. V., & Brown, N. R., (2015). Assessing the impact of “the collapse” on the organization and content of autobiographical memory in the former Soviet Union. Journal of Social Issues, 71(2), 324–337. doi: 10.1111/josi.12113
O’Brien, F., & Cousineau, D., (2014). Representing error bars in within-subject designs in typical software packages. The Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 10(1), 56–67. doi: 10.20982/tqmp.10.1.p056
Perrin, D., (2016). Asymmetries in subjective time. In K., Michaelian, S. B., Klein, & K. K., Szpunar (Eds.), Seeing the future: Theoretical perspectives on future-oriented mental time travel (pp. 39–61). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Russo, J. E., Johnson, E. J., & Stephens, D. L., (1989). The validity of verbal protocols. Memory & Cognition, 17(6), 759–769. doi: 10.3758/BF03202637
Schacter, D. L., & Addis, D. R., (2007). The cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory: Remembering the past and imagining the future. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 362(1481), 773–786. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2007.2087
Schacter, D. L., Addis, D. R., Hassabis, D., Martin, V. C., Spreng, R. N., & Szpunar, K. K., (2012). The future of memory: Remembering, imagining, and the brain. Neuron, 76(4), 677–694. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.11.001
Shum, M. S., (1998). The role of temporal landmarks in autobiographical memory processes. Psychological Bulletin, 124(3), 423–442. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.124.3.423
Skowronski, J., Betz, A., Thompson, C., & Larsen, S., (1995). Long-term performance in autobiographical event dating: Patterns of accuracy and error across a two-and-a-half year time span. In A. F., Healy & L. E., Bourne (Eds.), Learning and memory of knowledge and skills: Durability and specificity (pp. 206–233). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Suddendorf, T., & Corballis, M. C., (1997). Mental time travel and the evolution of the human mind. Genetic Social and General Psychology Monographs, 123(2), 133–167.
Suddendorf, T., & Corballis, M. C., (2007). The evolution of foresight: What is mental time travel, and is it unique to humans? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 30(3), 299–313.
Szpunar, K. K., Addis, D. R., McLelland, V. C., & Schacter, D. L., (2013). Memories of the future: New insights into the adaptive value of episodic memory. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 7, Article no. 47. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2013.00047
Thompson, C. P., Skowronski, J. J., & Betz, A. L., (1993). The use of partial temporal information in dating personal events. Memory & Cognition, 21(3), 352–360. doi: 10.3758/BF03208267
Thompson, C. P., Skowronski, J. J., Larsen, S. F., & Betz, A. L., (Eds.). (1996). Autobiographical memory: Remembering what and remembering when. Mahwah, NJ: Psychology Press.
Thomsen, D. K., (2015). Autobiographical periods: A review and central components of a theory. Review of General Psychology, 19(3), 294–310. doi: 10.1037/gpr0000043
Tulving, E., (2002). Chronesthesia: Conscious awareness of subjective time.
von Eye, A., & von Eye, M., (2008). On the marginal dependency of Cohen’s κ. European Psychologist, 13(4), 305–315. doi: 10.1027/1016-9040.13.4.305
Zebian, S., & Brown, N. R., (2014). Living in history in Lebanon: The influence of chronic social upheaval on the organisation of autobiographical memories. Memory, 22(3), 194–211. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2013.775310