scholarly journals Episodic memory and future thinking during early childhood: Linking the past and future

2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 552-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly Cuevas ◽  
Vinaya Rajan ◽  
Katherine C. Morasch ◽  
Martha Ann Bell
2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 266-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew K MacLeod

Prospection (mental representation of the future) is an aspect of imagination that has recently become a focus of attention for researchers on memory. Evidence from a variety of sources points to episodic memory and future-thinking as being very closely linked and both are connected to well-being and mental health. This article provides an overview of some key findings linking episodic memory, future-thinking and well-being. Similarities and differences between episodic memories for the past and thoughts about the future are reviewed. It is suggested that the uncertainty inherent in future-thinking implies a greater role for semantic memory in how people think about the future compared to how they remember the past. Understanding how semantic and episodic knowledge combine to create representations about the future has the potential to help elucidate ways in which people experiencing psychological distress think about the future.


2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (10) ◽  
pp. 3037-3051 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Weiler ◽  
Boris Suchan ◽  
Benno Koch ◽  
Michael Schwarz ◽  
Irene Daum

Vividly remembering the past and imagining the future (mental time travel) seem to rely on common neural substrates and mental time travel impairments in patients with brain lesions seem to encompass both temporal domains. However, because future thinking—or more generally imagining novel events—involves the recombination of stored elements into a new event, it requires additional resources that are not shared by episodic memory. We aimed to demonstrate this asymmetry in an event generation task administered to two patients with lesions in the medial dorsal thalamus. Because of the dense connection with pFC, this nucleus of the thalamus is implicated in executive aspects of memory (strategic retrieval), which are presumably more important for future thinking than for episodic memory. Compared with groups of healthy matched control participants, both patients could only produce novel events with extensive help of the experimenter (prompting) in the absence of episodic memory problems. Impairments were most pronounced for imagining personal fictitious and impersonal events. More precisely, the patients' descriptions of novel events lacked content and spatio-temporal relations. The observed impairment is unlikely to trace back to disturbances in self-projection, scene construction, or time concept and could be explained by a recombination deficit. Thus, although memory and the imagination of novel events are tightly linked, they also partly rely on different processes.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Sri Suyanta

Character education is a necessity across the area, time and age. Character education is absolutely necessary not only in school, but also at home and in other social environments. It was prioritized since the past, present and future. Even today the students in character education is no longer for an early childhood but also adult and even the elderly age. Therefore character education should be designed and implemented systematically and simultaneously to help the students understand the human behavioral values which are associated with someoneself, fellow human beings, the environment and his or her Lord. Character education can be reached through three stages, namely socialization of the introduction, internalization, application in life.


Author(s):  
Julia Rodríguez-Carrillo ◽  
Elena González-Alfaya ◽  
Rosario Mérida-Serrano ◽  
Mª Ángeles Olivares-García

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa C. Castro ◽  
Ricardo R. Gudwin

In this paper the authors present the development of a scene-based episodic memory module for the cognitive architecture controlling an autonomous virtual creature, in a simulated 3D environment. The scene-based episodic memory has the role of improving the creature’s navigation system, by evoking the objects to be considered in planning, according to episodic remembrance of earlier scenes testified by the creature where these objects were present in the past. They introduce the main background on human memory systems and episodic memory study, and provide the main ideas behind the experiment.


2000 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 13-18
Author(s):  
Hayley McBrien ◽  
Anna Bower

This paper examines current issues and availability of employer-sponsored child care in Australia and compares two international perspectives on the issue of child care and responsibility with the present Australian perspective. The historical emergence of employer-sponsored child care in Australia is traced over the past two decades and is supported by three examples of companies having successfully used such arrangements. Implications for early childhood professionals and the changing roles practitioners face in terms of ensuring quality and equity in services for young children and their families are discussed. The authors propose employer-sponsored child care as a viable option for Australian families, and argue for the establishment of a central body responsible for supporting and monitoring quality, with equity being an essential component.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 428-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes B. Mahr ◽  
Gergely Csibra

The past is undeniably special for human beings. To a large extent, both individuals and collectives define themselves through history. Moreover, humans seem to have a special way of cognitively representing the past: episodic memory. As opposed to other ways of representing knowledge, remembering the past in episodic memory brings with it the ability to become a witness. Episodic memory allows us to determine what of our knowledge about the past comes from our own experience and thereby what parts of the past we can give testimony about. In this article, we aim to give an account of the special status of the past by asking why humans have developed the ability to give testimony about it. We argue that the past is special for human beings because it is regularly, and often principally, the only thing that can determine present social realities such as commitments, entitlements, and obligations. Because the social effects of the past often do not leave physical traces behind, remembering the past and the ability to bear testimony it brings is necessary for coordinating social realities with other individuals.


Author(s):  
Daniel L. Schacter ◽  
Aleea L. Devitt ◽  
Donna Rose Addis

Episodic future thinking refers to the ability to imagine or simulate experiences that might occur in an individual’s personal future. It has been known for decades that cognitive aging is associated with declines in episodic memory, and recent research has documented correlated age-related declines in episodic future thinking. Previous research has considered both cognitive and neural mechanisms that are responsible for age-related changes in episodic future thinking, as well as effects of aging on the functions served by episodic future thinking. Studies concerned with mechanism indicate that multiple cognitive mechanisms contribute to changes in episodic future thinking during aging, including episodic memory retrieval, narrative style, and executive processes. Recent studies using an episodic specificity induction—brief training in recollecting episodic details of a recent experience—have proven useful in separating the contributions of episodic retrieval from other non-episodic processes during future thinking tasks in both old and young adults. Neuroimaging studies provide preliminary evidence of a role for age-related changes in default and executive brain networks in episodic future thinking and autobiographical planning. Studies concerned with function have examined age-related effects on the link between episodic future thinking and a variety of processes, including everyday problem-solving, prospective memory, prosocial intentions, and intertemporal choice/delay discounting. The general finding in these studies is for age-related reductions, consistent with the work on mechanisms that consistently reveals reduced episodic detail in older adults when they imagine future events. However, several studies have revealed that episodic simulation nonetheless confers some benefits for tasks tapping adaptive functions in older adults, such as problem-solving, prospective memory, and prosocial intentions, even though age-related deficits on these tasks are not eliminated or reduced by episodic future thinking.


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