Cuing both positive and negative episodic foresight reduces delay discounting but does not affect risk-taking
- Authors: Bulley, Adam , Miloyan, Beyon , Pepper, Gillian , Gullo, Matthew , Henry, Julie , Suddendorf, Thomas
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Vol. 72, no. 8 (2019), p. 1998-2017
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Humans frequently create mental models of the future, allowing outcomes to be inferred in advance of their occurrence. Recent evidence suggests that imagining positive future events reduces delay discounting (the devaluation of reward with time until its receipt), while imagining negative future events may increase it. Here, using a sample of 297 participants, we experimentally assess the effects of cued episodic simulation of positive and negative future scenarios on decision-making in the context of both delay discounting (monetary choice questionnaire) and risk-taking (balloon-analogue risk task). Participants discounted the future less when cued to imagine positive and negative future scenarios than they did when cued to engage in control neutral imagery. There were no effects of experimental condition on risk-taking. Thus, although these results replicate previous findings suggesting episodic future simulation can reduce delay discounting, they indicate that this effect is not dependent on the valence of the thoughts, and does not generalise to all other forms of impulsive decision-making. We discuss various interpretations of these results, and suggest avenues for further research on the role of prospection in decision-making.
Anxiety: Here and beyond
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , Bulley, Adam , Suddendorf, Thomas
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Emotion Review Vol. , no. (2018), p.
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: The future harbours the potential for myriad threats to the fitness of organisms, and many species prepare accordingly based on indicators of hazards. Here, we distinguish between defensive responses on the basis of sensed cues and those based on autocues generated by mental simulations of the future in humans. Whereas sensed threat cues usually induce specific responses with reference to particular features of the environment or generalized responses to protect against diffuse threats, autocues generated by mental simulations of the future enable strategic preparation for hazards that may not require an immediate response. The overlap of these mechanisms makes defence effective and versatile, yet can manifest as contemporary anxiety disorders in humans.
Future-oriented thought patterns associated with anxiety and depression in later life : The intriguing prospects of prospection
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , Pachana, Nancy , Suddendorf, Thomas
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Gerontologist Vol. 57, no. 4 (2017), p. 619-625
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Anxiety and mood disorders in later life are the focus of an increasing amount of intervention research, however basic mechanisms and paradigms explaining etiology and maintenance warrant further exploration. Research on future-oriented thought patterns associated with anxiety and depression in this age group may prove useful, as these disorders are both characterized by a tendency to generate and fixate on threat-related future scenarios that may or may not materialize. Additionally, depression is associated with a reduced expectancy of positive future events. In this paper, we review the literature relevant to future thinking in anxiety and depression in older adults. We focus on the mental construction and anticipation of negative future events, and their underlying neurocognitive mechanisms. We then consider clinical and research implications of anxious and depressive future-oriented thought patterns for older adults. We believe that more research investigating future-oriented thought patterns associated with emotional disorders in later life could improve conceptualization, measurement, and perhaps potential treatments for late-life anxiety and depression. © 2016 The Author.
Episodic foresight and anxiety : Proximate and ultimate perspectives
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , Bulley, Adam , Suddendorf, Thomas
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: British Journal of Clinical Psychology Vol. 55, no. 1 (2016), p. 4-22
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Objective In this paper, we examine the relationship between episodic foresight and anxiety from an evolutionary perspective, proposing that together they confer an advantage for modifying present moment decision-making and behaviour in the light of potential future threats to fitness. Methods We review the body of literature on the role of episodic foresight in anxiety, from both proximate and ultimate perspectives. Results We propose that anxious feelings associated with episodic simulation of possible threat-related future events serve to imbue these simulations with motivational currency. Episodic and semantic details of a future threat may be insufficient for motivating its avoidance, but anxiety associated with a simulation can provoke adaptive threat management. As such, we detail how anxiety triggered by a self-generated, threat-related future simulation prepares the individual to manage that threat (in terms of its likelihood and/or consequences) over greater temporal distances than observed in other animals. We then outline how anxiety subtypes may represent specific mechanisms for predicting and managing particular classes of fitness threats. Conclusions This approach offers an inroad for understanding the nature of characteristic future thinking patterns in anxiety disorders and serves to illustrate the adaptive function of the mechanism from which clinical anxiety deviates. © 2015 The British Psychological Society.
Feelings of the future
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , Suddendorf, Thomas
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol. 19, no. 4 (2015), p. 196-200
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Affective forecasting refers to the capacity to predict future feelings. Humans have been found to exhibit systematic affective forecasting biases that involve overestimation of the intensity and duration of future feelings. Although recent research has elucidated the proximate mechanisms underlying our ability to predict future feelings, explanations concerning the potential adaptive significance of these biases have attracted little attention. Here we consider the function of affective forecasts as signals of biological value, drivers of goal pursuit, and tools for eliciting collaboration. Although affective forecasting biases can have significant costs, for instance in terms of one's pursuit of happiness, they may ultimately serve adaptive functions.
Measuring mental time travel : Is the hippocampus really critical for episodic memory and episodic foresight?
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , McFarlane, Kimberley , Suddendorf, Thomas
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article , Review
- Relation: Cortex Vol. 117, no. (2019), p. 371-384
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Mental time travel is an adaptive capacity that enables humans to engage in deliberate, prudent action on the basis of remembering past episodes (episodic memory) and simulating future scenarios (episodic foresight). This capacity has become a popular and rapidly growing topic of interdisciplinary research. Perhaps the most influential and frequently tested neuroscientific hypothesis in this domain is that the hippocampus is a hub in a critical neural network for mental time travel, support for which is now commonly assumed by most researchers in the area. In light of.recent findings revealing limitations with existing measures of episodic foresight, we critically evaluate the available evidence for this hypothesis and find that it is inconclusive. We suggest that this is due in significant part to the exclusive and widespread reliance on noisy verbal measures and discuss this case as an example of a more general issue pertaining to the measurement of episodic foresight. Accordingly, we suggest that an essential focus of future research should concern the development of objective measures that capture capacity differences by requiring people to put foresight not just into words, but into action. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.