Brendan Gaesser

Characterizing Age-Related Changes in Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future

When remembering past events or imagining possible future events, older adults generate fewer episodic details than do younger adults. These results support the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis: deficits in retrieving episodic details underlie changes during memory and imagination. To examine the extent of this age-related reduction in specificity, we compared performance on memory and imagination tasks to a picture description task that does not require episodic memory. In two experiments, older adults exhibited comparable specificity reductions across all conditions. These findings emphasize the need to consider age-related changes in imagination and memory in a broader theoretical context.

Constructive episodic simulation: dissociable effects of a specificity induction on remembering, imagining, and describing in young and older adults.

According to the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis (Schacter & Addis, 2007), both remembered past and imagined future events rely heavily on episodic memory. An alternative hypothesis is that observed similarities between remembering and imagining reflect the influence of broader factors such as descriptive ability, narrative style, or inhibitory control. We attempted to distinguish between these 2 hypotheses by examining the impact of an episodic specificity induction on memory, imagination, and picture description in young and older adults. In Experiment 1, participants received the specificity induction or a control induction prior to the memory, imagination, and description tasks. Older adults provided fewer internal (i.e., episodic) and more external (i.e., semantic) details than young adults across the 3 tasks irrespective of induction. Critically, however, the specificity induction selectively increased internal but not external details for memory and imagination in both age groups compared with the control induction. By contrast, the induction did not affect internal (or external) details for picture description. Experiment 2 replicated these results in young adults using a different control induction. Our findings point to a dissociation between episodic processes involved in memory and imagination and nonepisodic processes involved in picture description.

Imagining the future: Evidence for a hippocampal contribution to constructive processing

Imagining future events and remembering past events rely on a common core network, but several regions within this network—including the hippocampus—show increased activity for imagining future events compared to remembering past events. It remains unclear whether this hippocampal activity reflects processes related to the demands of constructing details retrieved across disparate episodic memories into coherent imaginary events, encoding these events into memory, novelty detection, or some combination of these processes. We manipulated the degree of constructive processing by comparing activity associated with the initial construction of an imagined scenario with the re‐construction of an imagined scenario (imagine vs. re‐imagine). After accounting for effects of novelty and subsequent memory, we found that a region in the hippocampus was preferentially activated for newly constructed imagined events compared with re‐imagined events. Our results suggest that the hippocampus may support several distinct but related processes that are critical for imagining future events, and they also indicate that a particular region within posterior hippocampus may uniquely contribute to the construction of imagined future events.

Episodic simulation and episodic memory can increase intentions to help others

Significance Humans are readily willing to help individuals in need, in part because they can adopt the thoughts and feelings of others. Here, we provide evidence of an additional mechanism facilitating empathic responses. Our experiments revealed that, when presented with a situation depicting another person’s plight, participants who imagined an event in which they help the person (episodic simulation) or remembered a related past event of actually helping others (episodic memory) showed increased prosocial intentions. The findings reported here provide a starting point for research that could be used to develop new strategies targeted at episodic mechanisms for promoting empathy, as well as to guide research that attempts to characterize and improve empathic deficits in patient populations. Empathy plays an important role in human social interaction. A multifaceted construct, empathy includes a prosocial motivation or intention to help others in need. Although humans are often willing to help others in need, at times (e.g., during intergroup conflict), empathic responses are diminished or absent. Research examining the cognitive mechanisms underlying prosocial tendencies has focused on the facilitating roles of perspective taking and emotion sharing but has not previously elucidated the contributions of episodic simulation and memory to facilitating prosocial intentions. Here, we investigated whether humans’ ability to construct episodes by vividly imagining (episodic simulation) or remembering (episodic memory) specific events also supports a willingness to help others. Three experiments provide evidence that, when participants were presented with a situation depicting another person’s plight, the act of imagining an event of helping the person or remembering a related past event of helping others increased prosocial intentions to help the present person in need, compared with various control conditions. We also report evidence suggesting that the vividness of constructed episodes—rather than simply heightened emotional reactions or degree of perspective taking—supports this effect. Our results shed light on a role that episodic simulation and memory can play in fostering empathy and begin to offer insight into the underlying mechanisms.

Constructing Memory, Imagination, and Empathy: A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective

Studies on memory, imagination, and empathy have largely progressed in isolation. Consequently, humans’ empathic tendencies to care about and help other people are considered independent of our ability to remember and imagine events. Despite this theoretical autonomy, work from across psychology, and neuroscience suggests that these cognitive abilities may be linked. In the present paper, I tentatively propose that humans’ ability to vividly imagine specific events (as supported by constructive memory) may facilitate prosocial intentions and behavior. Evidence of a relationship between memory, imagination, and empathy comes from research that shows imagination influences the perceived and actual likelihood an event occurs, improves intergroup relations, and shares a neural basis with memory and empathy. Although many questions remain, this paper outlines a new direction for research that investigates the role of imagination in promoting empathy and prosocial behavior.

Effects of aging on the relation between episodic simulation and prosocial intentions

ABSTRACT Imagining helping a person in need can facilitate prosocial intentions. Here we investigated how this effect can change with aging. We found that, similar to young adults, older adults were more willing to help a person in need when they imagined helping that person compared to a baseline condition that did not involve helping, but not compared to a conceptual helping control condition. Controlling for heightened emotional concern in older adults revealed an age-related difference in the effect of imagining on willingness to help. While we observed age-related condition effects, we also found that the subjective vividness of scene imagery predicted willingness to help for both age groups. Our findings provide insight into the relations among episodic simulation, healthy aging, emotion, and prosociality. Implications for effects of episodic memory and aging on social decision-making are discussed.

A role for affect in the link between episodic simulation and prosociality

ABSTRACT Prospection and prosociality are hallmarks of our species. Little is known, however, about how our ability to imagine or simulate specific future events contributes to our capacity for prosociality. Here, we investigated this relationship, revealing how the affective response that arises from a simulated prosocial event motivates a willingness to help a person in need. Across two experiments, people reported being more willing to help in specific situations after simulating future helping events that elicited positive (versus negative or neutral) affect. Positive affect increased engagement of theory of mind for the person in need, which in turn informed prosocial responses. Moreover, the subjective experience of scene imagery and theory of mind systematically couple together depending on the affective valence of future simulations, providing new insight into how affective valence guides a prosocial function of episodic simulation.

Moral imagination: Facilitating prosocial decision-making through scene imagery and theory of mind

How we imagine and subjectively experience the future can inform how we make decisions in the present. Here, we examined a prosocial effect of imagining future episodes in motivating moral decisions about helping others in need, as well as the underlying cognitive mechanisms. Across three experiments we found that people are more willing to help others in specific situations after imagining helping them in those situations. Manipulating the spatial representation of imagined future episodes in particular was effective at increasing intentions to help others, suggesting that scene imagery plays an important role in the prosocial effect of episodic simulation. Path modeling analyses revealed that episodic simulation interacts with theory of mind in facilitating prosocial responses but can also operate independently. Moreover, we found that our manipulations of the imagined helping episode increased actual prosocial behavior, which also correlated with changes in reported willingness to help. Based on these findings, we propose a new model that begins to capture the multifaceted mechanisms by which episodic simulation contributes to prosocial decision-making, highlighting boundaries and promising future directions to explore. Implications for research in moral cognition, imagination, and patients with impairments in episodic simulation are discussed.