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Harnessing Visual Imagery and Oculomotor Behaviour to Understand Prospection
Federica Conti1, Muireann Irish2
1Institut des Neurosciences de la Timone, Aix-Marseille University, 27 Boulevard Jean Moulin, 13005 Marseille, France; The University of Sydney, Brain and Mind Centre and School of Psychology, 94 Mallett Street, Camperdown, NSW 2050, Australia.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
|February 23, 2021
Summary
Humans construct future events using visual mental imagery, drawing on past visual experiences. Differences in visualizing ability explain variations in future thinking, offering insights into health and disease.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Psychology
Background:
- Human internal worlds rely heavily on visual mental imagery.
- Existing theories of future thinking (prospection) lack a detailed account of visual imagery's role.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose a framework integrating visual mental imagery into theories of future event construction.
- To explore how individual differences in visual imagery capacity influence future simulation.
Main Methods:
- Theoretical framework development.
- Review of existing literature on visual imagery and episodic memory.
- Conceptual integration of perceptual reinstatement and future thinking.
Main Results:
- Future event construction depends on assimilating and reinstantiating past visual perceptual details.
- Individual variations in visual imagery capacity correlate with diverse future simulation content.
Conclusions:
- Visual mental imagery is crucial for constructing future events.
- This framework can be used to study alterations in future thinking in various health conditions.
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