Lehner Edith, D'Argembeau Arnaud
University of Liège, Belgium.
University of Liège, Belgium.
Conscious Cogn. 2016 May;42:267-276. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2016.04.002. Epub 2016 Apr 15.
Although autonoetic experience-a sense of mental time travel-has been considered as the hallmark of episodic future thinking, what determines this subjective feeling is not yet fully understood. Here, we investigated the role of autobiographical knowledge by manipulating the relevance of imagined events for personal goals. Participants were asked to imagine three types of events (goal-related future events, experimenter-provided future events, and atemporal events) and to assess various characteristics of their mental representations. The results showed that the three types of events were represented with similar levels of detail and vividness. Importantly, however, goal-related future events were associated with a stronger autonoetic experience. Furthermore, autonoetic experience was significantly predicted by the importance of imagined events for personal goals. These findings suggest that the subjective feeling of pre-experiencing one's personal future in part depends on the extent to which imagined events can be placed in an autobiographical context.
尽管自我觉知体验——一种心理时间旅行的感觉——被视为情景式未来思维的标志，但决定这种主观感受的因素尚未完全明了。在此，我们通过操纵想象事件与个人目标的相关性来研究自传体知识的作用。参与者被要求想象三种类型的事件（与目标相关的未来事件、实验者提供的未来事件和非时间性事件），并评估其心理表征的各种特征。结果显示，这三种类型的事件在细节和生动程度上的表征水平相似。然而，重要的是，与目标相关的未来事件与更强的自我觉知体验相关联。此外，自我觉知体验可由想象事件对个人目标的重要性显著预测。这些发现表明，预先体验个人未来的主观感受部分取决于想象事件能够置于自传体背景中的程度。
