A transient effect of episodic simulation in repeated decision-making

Deciding what activities to engage in on a given day recruits multiple cognitive processes, including the episodic memory system. One of the ways in which the episodic memory system supports daily decision-making is by episodic simulation, allowing us to pre-experience prospective activities. Prior work has shown that episodic simulation can increase the likelihood that one engages in an activity in the future but has not tested whether this increased likelihood is consistent across repeated choices or whether it depends on what is being simulated. Thus, the goal of the present study was to first characterize how episodic simulation affects repeated decisions for engaging in everyday activities, and then to address whether the content of these simulations shifted choice behaviour in a similar scenario. Across three experiments, we tested the hypotheses that simulated activities would be more likely to be chosen than unsimulated activities, but that this effect would decline across repeated choice scenarios (Experiments 1 and 2), and depend on the content of the simulation (Experiment 3). In support of these hypotheses, we found evidence for a transient effect of episodic simulation on the likelihood of choosing a simulated activity over an unsimulated activity. Furthermore, this effect was observed primarily when the simulations involved imagining rather than planning the activities. Together, our results provide insight into how people make everyday decisions and how these decisions may be influenced by episodic simulation and repeated choice.