On the Role of Personal Semantic Memory and Temporal Distance in Episodic Future Thinking: The TEDIFT Model

In the last two decades, the study of memory processes has been expanded to encompass the processes involved in foreseeing events in the future dimension. The mental time travel is a mental ability, which allows individuals not only to go back in time but also to foresee specific future events (Suddendorf and Corballis, 1997). The ability to project the self forward in time to pre-experience personal events is referred to as episodic future thinking (EFT) (Atance and O’Neill, 2001). This capacity has a strong adaptive and social value (Tulving, 2002; D’Argembeau and Van der Linden, 2012). While evidence is accruing regarding the existence of semantic general forms of prospection (Klein, 2013; Irish et al., 2016), it seems relevant to envisage the role of personal semantic representations in prospection. Here we focus on the impact of personal semantics depending on temporal distance in episodic forms of foresight. In what follows we (I) give a brief overview of different EFT accounts, (II) discuss the role of personal semantics in EFT, (III) propose a neurocognitive model, in which the role of personal semantic information in EFT is defined as a function of temporal distance, (IV) speculate about temporally graded EFT deficits in Alzheimer’s disease and semantic dementia.