Psychological Research

Berntsen, Dorthe

doi: 10.1007/s00426-018-1127-zpmid: 30535833

Spontaneous future cognitions refer to mental representations about the future that enter consciousness with no immediately preceding attempt of bringing them to mind. They are studied under different terms in several areas of psychology, but with little interdisciplinary exchange of findings and theoretical developments. Different conceptions of spontaneous future cognition derive from separate literatures and are rarely considered together, leaving their potential conceptual overlaps as well as their unique features unclarified. In this article, I review research on spontaneous future cognitions in relation to mind wandering, involuntary episodic future thoughts, and intrusive future imagery in cravings and clinical disorders. I conclude that more research is needed to clarify the potential functions served by spontaneous future cognitions in everyday life, under which conditions they may become dysfunctional, how they are triggered by situational cues, and how their content may be constrained by motivational factors and beliefs. The burgeoning field of spontaneous future cognitions forms a promising novel approach to the cognitive and motivational regulation of behavior in everyday life.

Barzykowski, Krystian; Radel, Rémi; Niedźwieńska, Agnieszka; Kvavilashvili, Lia

doi: 10.1007/s00426-018-1120-6pmid: 30483873

In everyday life, involuntary thoughts about future plans and events occur as often as involuntary thoughts about the past. However, compared to involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs), such episodic involuntary future thoughts (IFTs) have become a focus of study only recently. The aim of the present investigation was to examine why we are not constantly flooded by IFTs and IAMs given that they are often triggered by incidental cues while performing undemanding activities. One possibility is that activated thoughts are suppressed by the inhibitory control mechanism, and therefore depleting inhibitory control should enhance the frequency of both IFTs and IAMs. We report an experiment with a between-subjects design, in which participants in the depleted inhibition condition performed a 60-min high-conflict Stroop task before completing a laboratory vigilance task measuring the frequency of IFTs and IAMs. Participants in the intact inhibition condition performed a version of the Stroop task that did not deplete inhibitory control. To control for physical and mental fatigue resulting from performing the 60-min Stroop tasks in experimental conditions, participants in the control condition completed only the vigilance task. Contrary to predictions, the number of IFTs and IAMs reported during the vigilance task, using the probe-caught method, did not differ across conditions. However, manipulation checks showed that participants’ inhibitory resources were reduced in the depleted inhibition condition, and participants were more tired in the experimental than in the control conditions. These initial findings suggest that neither inhibitory control nor physical and mental fatigue affect the frequency of IFTs and IAMs.

Mazzoni, Giuliana

doi: 10.1007/s00426-018-1123-3pmid: 30478607

During the past 20 years involuntary memories have been established as a noteworthy phenomenon, which occur spontaneously in everyday life and with greater frequency than expected. Other types of ideations also occur involuntarily and very frequently, both in the normal population and in clinical groups. The aim of this paper was to assess for the first time whether involuntary memories and involuntary future thoughts differ in the amount of cognitive resources, considering that both are experienced as being rather automatic. As in previous work on mind wandering, this was done by assessing the effect of different conditions on frequency of spontaneous thoughts about past and future. Involuntary memories and future thoughts were obtained in an experimental setting (vigilance task) that mimics a mind-wandering task. In it, participants saw slides (trials) with horizontal or vertical (target) lines. In half or one-fourth of the trials verbal cues were also presented. In a third condition one-fourth of the trials had verbal cues and one-fourth had simple arithmetic calculations. Participants were asked to report any mental content that crosses their mind when the vigilance task stopped. Results show that the manipulation modulates the number of both involuntary memories and future thoughts, and both engage cognitive resources. Future involuntary thoughts seem to require more cognitive effort than involuntary memories and, specifically, future scenarios require more cognitive resources than both involuntary memories and future plans. The results support previous findings showing that reporting spontaneous mental contents makes use of cognitive resources and are discussed linking the involuntary memory literature with mind wandering and metacognitive processes.

Vannucci, Manila; Pelagatti, Claudia; Chiorri, Carlo; Brugger, Peter

doi: 10.1007/s00426-018-1080-xpmid: 30159671

Our understanding of mind wandering (MW) has dramatically increased over the past decade. Studies have shown that in the vast majority of cases, MW is directed to times other than the present, and a bias toward the future has been reported (prospective bias). The processing of time is not independent of the processing of space: humans represent time along a spatial continuum, on a “mental time line” (MTL). In cultures with a left to right reading/writing system, the MTL expands from left to right. Capitalizing on these findings, here we aimed at investigating the effects of visuo-spatial processing on the temporal orientation of spontaneous MW, and specifically we asked whether we could steer the temporal focus of MW towards the past or the future, by experimentally inducing a leftward and a rightward orienting of attention, respectively. To this aim, we experimentally manipulated the spatial orientation demands associated with the focal task in two independent groups, with a leftward orienting of attention (left-pointing arrows, LA group) and a rightward orienting of attention (right-pointing arrows, RA group). We found that the temporal orientation of MW critically depended on the spatial orientation demands of the task: specifically, the proportion of spontaneous past-oriented MW episodes was higher under the induction of a leftward orienting attention (LA group) than under the induction of a rightward orienting attention (RA group). The opposite pattern was found for spontaneous future-oriented MW episodes. Possible mechanisms involved in this effect and their implications for research on MW and spontaneous cognition are discussed.

Warden, Elizabeth; Plimpton, Benjamin; Kvavilashvili, Lia

doi: 10.1007/s00426-018-1103-7pmid: 30269274

Previous research on voluntary mental time travel (i.e., deliberately thinking about the past or future) has resulted in negative age effects. In contrast, studies on spontaneous past thoughts (i.e., involuntary autobiographical memories) have reported small or no age effects. The aim of the present research was to investigate the effects of age on the nature and frequency of spontaneous future thoughts in everyday life. In two studies, we examined whether older adults reported spontaneous future thoughts as often as younger adults, and whether these thoughts were predominantly goal-oriented and less dependent on incidental cues than thoughts about the past. In Study 1, young and old participants kept a diary of spontaneous thoughts of upcoming prospective memory tasks and involuntary autobiographical memories for 2 weeks. In Study 2, a 1-day experience sampling method was used to investigate spontaneous and deliberate task-unrelated future and past thoughts, by having young and old participants complete a questionnaire in response to 30 random signals. In both studies, no age effects were found in the frequency of spontaneous future thoughts, which were reported as frequently as thoughts about the past (Study 2) and referred predominantly to upcoming tasks and goals rather than future events or hypothetical events (Study 2). Results concerning the triggers of reported thoughts provide initial support for the idea that representations of future thoughts may be more activated than memories of past events. Taken together, these results have important implications for research on cognitive ageing, mind-wandering, prospective memory and involuntary autobiographical memories.

Irish, Muireann; Goldberg, Zoë-lee; Alaeddin, Sara; O’Callaghan, Claire; Andrews-Hanna, Jessica

doi: 10.1007/s00426-018-1102-8pmid: 30291418

An intriguing aspect of human cognition is the unique capacity to mentally retreat from our immediate surroundings to consider perspectives distinct from the here and now. Despite increasing interest in this phenomenon, relatively little is known regarding age-related changes in off-task, self-generated thought (often referred to as “mind-wandering”), particularly under conditions of low cognitive demand. While a number of studies have investigated the temporal orientation of mind-wandering with increasing age, findings have been largely inconsistent. Here, we explored the frequency, temporal focus, and self-referential/social content of spontaneous task-unrelated, perceptually decoupled thought in 30 young and 33 healthy older adults using the Shape Expectations task, a validated experimental paradigm in which discrete facets of inner mentation are quantified along a conceptual continuum using open-ended report. Participants also completed the daydreaming subscale of the Imaginal Process Inventory (IPI) as a trait measure of mind-wandering propensity. Significant group differences emerged on the Shape Expectations task, with reduced instances of mind-wandering in the context of elevated task-related thoughts relative to younger adults. In terms of temporal focus, a preponderance of present/atemporal off-task thoughts was evident irrespective of group; however, significantly higher levels of future-oriented thoughts were provided by younger adults, contrasting with significantly higher instances of retrospection in the older group. In addition, older adults displayed significantly fewer incidences of self-referential cognition relative to their younger counterparts. Our findings indicate a distinct attenuation of off-task, self-generated thought processes with increasing age, with evidence for a shift in temporal focus and self-referential quality, during periods of low cognitive demand.

Caza, Julian; Atance, Cristina

doi: 10.1007/s00426-018-1089-1pmid: 30187115

We explored 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds’ (N = 120) “explicit” and “spontaneous” future-oriented cognition. Specifically, children had to think ahead to meet a future physiological need (desire for food) or psychological need (avoiding boredom). One group of children alternated between a room with candy and a room without candy, spending 3 min per visit. Children were explicitly asked which room they wanted to put extra candy in for a future visit to the lab (correct answer: room without candy). A second group of children underwent the same procedure but with toys as the resource instead of food (a replication of Atance et al. in J Exp Child Psychol 129:98–109, 2015). In the food condition, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds all placed candy in the correct room above chance, but only 4- and 5-year-olds were above chance in the toy condition. Overall, 4- and 5-year-olds outperformed 3-year-olds, and children performed better in the food condition than the toy condition. Children’s spontaneous (or “involuntary”) future thinking was assessed by coding their utterances while in the two rooms. Children who solved the explicit task uttered more task-relevant future and past statements than children who failed. Examining spontaneous talk also allowed us to explore children’s spontaneous “solving” of the task before being asked an explicit test question. This research highlights the importance of varying stimuli in future thinking tasks and developing methods to capture spontaneous/involuntary future thinking in young children.

McCormack, Teresa; Burns, Patrick; O’Connor, Patrick; Jaroslawska, Agnieszka; Caruso, Eugene

doi: 10.1007/s00426-018-1077-5pmid: 30159672

Previous research has indicated that adults have a future-oriented cognitive bias, one illustration of which is their tendency to report more thoughts about the future than the past during mind-wandering. We examined whether children showed a similar bias, and whether there were any developmental changes in the magnitude of such a bias. Children aged 6–7 and 9–10 years, adolescents, and adults completed two tasks in which they could report either past or future thoughts: a mind-wandering task assessing spontaneous past and future thinking and a cued episodic thinking task in which they were free to describe either past or future events. Only adults showed a future-oriented bias in the mind-wandering task. Participants in all groups were much more likely to describe past events in the cue word task, and the proportion of future events described did not change developmentally. However, more than a third of the youngest age group produced no descriptions at all of future events, which was a significantly larger proportion than in any other age groups, and illustrates the difficulty that some children of this age have with future thinking. Our findings indicate that future-oriented bias and developmental changes in such bias may be task-specific.

del Palacio-Gonzalez, Adriana; Berntsen, Dorthe

doi: 10.1007/s00426-018-1132-2pmid: 30569386

Involuntary mental time travel (MTT) refers to projecting oneself into the past or into the future without prior conscious effort. The previous studies have shown high inter-individual variability in the frequency of involuntary MTT, but a few systematic studies exist. In three exploratory studies, we investigated the relation between individual differences in experiencing involuntary past and future MTT, and selected emotional and cognitive processes, with a special focus on thought suppression. Across all three studies, thought suppression emerged as a robust predictor of involuntary MTT above and beyond emotion-related variables, mind-wandering, daydreaming styles, and demographic variables. Findings from Studies 1 and 2 showed that higher thought suppression consistently predicted both more frequent involuntary past and future MTT across an American and a Danish sample, whereas rumination and emotion regulation were less consistently related to involuntary MTT. In Study 3, thought suppression reliably predicted more frequent involuntary MTT, even when controlling for mind-wandering, as well as for positive and negative daydreaming styles, which were all related to greater involuntary MTT. Overall, the individual differences assessed showed similar relationships to the tendency for having past and future involuntary MTT, with the possible exception of daydreaming styles, which appeared more strongly related to future-directed involuntary MTT.

Beaty, Roger; Seli, Paul; Schacter, Daniel

doi: 10.1007/s00426-018-1075-7pmid: 30123945

Remembering the past and imagining the future are hallmarks of mental time travel. We provide evidence that such experiences are influenced by individual differences in temporal and affective biases in cognitive style, particularly brooding rumination (a negative past-oriented bias) and optimism (a positive future-oriented bias). Participants completed a 7-day, cellphone-based experience-sampling study of temporal orientation and mental imagery. Multilevel models showed that individual differences in brooding rumination predicted less vivid and positive past- and future-oriented thoughts, even after controlling for depressed mood. People high in brooding rumination were also more likely to report thinking about a past experience when probed at random during the day. Conversely, optimists were more likely to report more vivid and positive future-oriented, but not past-oriented thoughts, although they did not report thinking more or less often about the past and future. The results suggest that temporal and affective biases in cognitive style influence how people think about the past and future in daily life.