Ito Yuichi, Terasawa Yuri, Umeda Satoshi, Kawaguchi Jun
Department of Psychology, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan.
Japan Society for Promotion of Science, Kojimachi Business Center Building, Tokyo, Japan.
Front Psychol. 2019 Mar 21;10:625. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00625. eCollection 2019.
Episodic future simulation is supported by both the retrieval and recombination of episodic details. It remains unclear, however, how individuals retrieve episodic details from memory to construct possible future scenarios; for this people must use details related to the planned future events appropriately. A potentially relevant cognitive process is the spontaneous activation of intention observed in prospective memory (i.e., the intention superiority effect). Previous studies on prospective memory have shown that the approximation of retrieval opportunities for future intentions activate related information, suggesting that the intention superiority effect is context-sensitive. We hypothesized that the same cognitive process underlies future simulation-that is, details related to future events should spontaneously become activated at the appropriate moment of future simulation to make that simulation plausible. In Experiment 1, participants took part in future experiments and formed intentions to perform particular actions for the next experiments. Subsequently, they imagined events that could occur up until they arrived at the experimental room on the day of the next experiment. During this exercise, they did not imagine engaging in the required experimental task. We measured the conceptual activation of intention-related information via a recognition task using intended action words as targets. The results showed the intention superiority effect-concepts related to participants' future intentions became active when envisioning future events approaching the next experiment. In Experiments 2 and 3, we ensured that the intention superiority effect in future simulation was context-sensitive by adding a control condition that required participants to imagine events other than the approaching future experiments. These results indicated that concepts related to the intended actions were spontaneously activated when imagined future events became both temporally and spatially close to the future simulation. Our finding suggests that spontaneous activation of details approaching the context of a future simulation helps in constructing plausible future scenarios.
情景未来模拟受到情景细节的检索和重组的支持。然而，目前尚不清楚个体如何从记忆中检索情景细节以构建可能的未来情景；为此，人们必须恰当地使用与计划中的未来事件相关的细节。一个潜在相关的认知过程是在前瞻性记忆中观察到的意图的自发激活（即意图优势效应）。先前关于前瞻性记忆的研究表明，未来意图的检索机会的接近会激活相关信息，这表明意图优势效应是依赖于情境的。我们假设相同的认知过程是未来模拟的基础——也就是说，与未来事件相关的细节应该在未来模拟的适当时候自发地被激活，以使该模拟合理。在实验1中，参与者参加了未来的实验，并形成了为下一个实验执行特定动作的意图。随后，他们想象在到达下一个实验当天进入实验室之前可能发生的事件。在这个过程中，他们没有想象参与所需的实验任务。我们通过使用预期动作词作为目标的识别任务来测量与意图相关信息的概念激活。结果显示了意图优势效应——当设想接近下一个实验的未来事件时，与参与者未来意图相关的概念变得活跃。在实验2和3中，我们通过添加一个控制条件来确保未来模拟中的意图优势效应是依赖于情境的，该控制条件要求参与者想象除了接近的未来实验之外的其他事件。这些结果表明，当想象的未来事件在时间和空间上都接近未来模拟时，与预期动作相关的概念会自发地被激活。我们的发现表明，接近未来模拟情境的细节的自发激活有助于构建合理的未来情景。
