Mental Representation of Autobiographical Memories Along the Sagittal Mental Timeline: Evidence from Spatiotemporal Interference

Overview

Journal Psychon Bull Rev

Specialty Psychology

Date 2021 Mar 30

PMID 33782918

Citations 2

Authors

Alice Teghil

Isabel Beatrice Marc

Maddalena Boccia

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Time is usually conceived of in terms of space: many natural languages refer to time according to a back-to-front axis. Indeed, whereas the past is usually conceived to be "behind us", the future is considered to be "in front of us." Despite temporal coding is pivotal for the development of autonoetic consciousness, little is known about the organization of autobiographical memories along this axis. Here we developed a spatial compatibility task (SCT) to test the organization of autobiographical memories along the sagittal plane, using spatiotemporal interference. Twenty-one participants were asked to recall both episodic and semantic autobiographical memories (EAM and SAM, respectively) to be used in the SCT. Then, during the SCT, they were asked to decide whether each event occurred before or after the event presented right before, using a response code that could be compatible with the back-to-front axis (future in front) or not (future at back). We found that performance was significantly worse during the non-compatible condition, especially for EAM. The results are discussed in light of the evidence for spatiotemporal encoding of episodic autobiographical memories, taking into account possible mechanisms explaining compatibility effects.

Citing Articles

Space-time mapping relationships in sensorimotor communication during asymmetric joint action.

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