RAPID COMMUNICATION Future Decision-Making Without Episodic Mental Time Travel
نویسندگان
چکیده
Deficits in episodic memory are associated with deficits in the ability to imagine future experiences (i.e., mental time travel). We show that K.C., a person with episodic amnesia and an inability to imagine future experiences, nonetheless systematically discounts the value of future rewards, and his discounting is within the range of controls in terms of both rate and consistency. Because K.C. is neither able to imagine personal uses for the rewards nor provide a rationale for selecting larger future rewards over smaller current rewards, this study demonstrates a dissociation between imagining and making decisions involving the future. Thus, although those capable of mental time travel may use it in making decisions about future rewards, these results demonstrate that it is not required for such decisions. VC 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
منابع مشابه
Future decision-making without episodic mental time travel.
Deficits in episodic memory are associated with deficits in the ability to imagine future experiences (i.e., mental time travel). We show that K.C., a person with episodic amnesia and an inability to imagine future experiences, nonetheless systematically discounts the value of future rewards, and his discounting is within the range of controls in terms of both rate and consistency. Because K.C....
متن کاملEvolutionary economics of mental time travel?
What is the function of our capacity for 'mental time travel'? Evolutionary considerations suggest that vivid memory and imaginative foresight may be crucial cognitive devices for human decision making. Our emotional engagement with past or future events gives them great motivational force, which may counter a natural tendency towards time discounting and impulsive, opportunistic behavior. In t...
متن کاملMental Time Travel: Can Animals Recall the Past and Plan for the Future?
In an influential paper that was published in 1997, Suddendorf and Corballis argued that we humans are unique among the animal kingdom in being able to mentally dissociate ourselves from the present. To do so, we travel backwards and forwards in themind’s eye to remember and reexperience specific events that happened in the past (episodic memory) and to anticipate and preexperience future scena...
متن کامل[Remembering past events activates temporal concepts of future].
The cognitive function to project oneself into the specific past or future is labeled mental time travel (MTT). MTT to the past is considered "episodic memory" and the future is termed "episodic future thinking". Remembering the past and imaging the future during MTT both draw on information stored in episodic memory: a process that enables integration of episodic information into a coherent ev...
متن کاملThe evolution of foresight: What is mental time travel, and is it unique to humans?
In a dynamic world, mechanisms allowing prediction of future situations can provide a selective advantage. We suggest that memory systems differ in the degree of flexibility they offer for anticipatory behavior and put forward a corresponding taxonomy of prospection. The adaptive advantage of any memory system can only lie in what it contributes for future survival. The most flexible is episodi...
متن کامل