Mental Time Travel: Is Experience Everything?
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Date
2013-04-08
Authors
Talisman, Emad
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
According
to
research
on
mental
time
travel,
differences
between
episodic
memory
and
episodic
future
thought
are
due
to
temporal
direction
(i.e.,
past
vs.
future).
Recently,
it
has
been
suggested
that
it
is
familiarity
with
memories
and
associated
details
that
may
affect
such
differences.
Following
the
recombination
methodology
of
Addis,
Pan,
Vu,
Laiser,
and
Schacter
(2009),
participants
(N
=
27)
were
asked
to
recall
episodic
memories,
and
to
imagine
episodic
events
in
the
past,
present,
or
future
using
memory
details
ranked
for
level
of
familiarity
collected
prior
to
the
experiment.
Data
on
both
self-‐report
(e.g.,
vividness,
effortfulness)
and
objective
(e.g.,
level
of
detail,
coherence)
characteristics
of
the
remembered
and
imagined
events
were
collected.
It
was
predicted
that
familiarity
with
memories
and
associated
details,
not
temporal
direction,
would
account
for
the
differences
between
episodic
memory
and
future
thought.
Results
did
not
support
this
hypothesis,
but
demonstrated
that
the
variation
between
episodic
memory
and
episodic
future
thought
is
due
to
the
relationship
between
remembering
and
imagination.
Suggestions
are
made
to
(a)
change
conceptualization
of
episodic
future
thought
such
that
the
focus
is
on
the
process
of
imagining
and
not
on
mental
projection
into
the
future,
and
(b)
replicate
the
current
design
with
a
false
memory
condition
to
validate
and
expand
upon
the
findings.
Description
Keywords
Memory , Episodic memory , Temporal direction