title: Involuntary (spontaneous) mental time travel into the past and future.
abstract: Mental time travel (MTT) is the ability to mentally project oneself backward in time to relive past experiences and forward in time to pre-live possible future experiences. Previous work has focused on MTT in its voluntary (controlled) form. Here, we introduce the notion of involuntary (spontaneous) MTT. We examined involuntary versus voluntary and past versus future MTT in a diary study. We found that involuntary future event representations-defined as representations of possible personal future events that come to mind with no preceding search attempts-were as common as involuntary autobiographical memories and similar to them regarding cuing and subjective qualities. Future MTT involved more positive and idyllic representations than past MTT. MTT into the distant future/past involved more representations of cultural life script events than MTT into the immediate past/future. The findings are discussed in relation to cultural learning and MTT considered as a higher mental process.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Aarhus, Nobelparken, Jens Chr. Skousvej 4, 8000 Aarhus C., Denmark. dorthe@psy.au.dk
authors.forename: Dorthe
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Berntsen
authors.forename: Anne Staerk
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Jacobsen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology; D001288:Attention; D001364:Awareness; D003210:Concept Formation; D003243:Consciousness; D003463:Cues; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D007206:Individuality; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D013850:Thinking; D013995:Time; D014836:Volition; D055815:Young Adult