Abstract
BackgroundThe ability to travel mentally through time sets humans apart from many other species, yet little is known about this core cognitive capacity. In particular, what shapes the passage of the mind's journey through time? Guided by the viewpoint that higher cognitive activity can have a sensory-motor grounding, we explored the possibility that mental time travel is influenced by apparent movement through space.Methodology/Principal FindingsParticipants performed a mundane vigilance task, during which they were expected to daydream, while viewing a display that elicited an illusion of self-motion (i.e., vection). Afterwards, the contents of their mind wandering experiences were probed. The results revealed that the direction of apparent motion influenced the temporal focus of mental time travel. While backward vection prompted thinking about the past, forward vection triggered a preponderance of future-oriented thoughts.Conclusions/SignificanceConsistent with recent evidence that traveling mentally through time entails associated movements in space, the current results demonstrate the converse relationship—apparent movement through space influenced the temporal locus of mental activity. Together, these findings corroborate the viewpoint that mental time travel may be grounded in the embodiment of spatiotemporal information in a bidirectional manner.
Highlights
A core facet of conscious experience is that one’s mind periodically wanders from the here-and
The current findings reveal that the direction of vection modulates the temporal locus of mental time travel (MTT)
Just as it has recently been established that traveling mentally through time is associated with physical movements through space [26], the current experiment demonstrated the reverse relationship – apparent movement through space influenced the temporal focus of mental activity
Summary
A core facet of conscious experience is that one’s mind periodically wanders from the here-and-now. The results revealed that the temporal locus of MTT did influence the direction of people’s movements — whereas retrospection was accompanied by significant backwards sway, prospection yielded postural movement in an anterior direction Noteworthy though these findings may be, they raise important questions regarding the precise theoretical status of the sensory-motor grounding of MTT [21,22]. Noting that minds typically wander during tedious, easy or practiced activities [30], in the current investigation participants were required to perform a vigilance task in which to-be-detected targets appeared infrequently Under such conditions (i.e., a cognitively undemanding task), spontaneous mental time travel was expected to occur [17]. Whereas backward vection was expected to trigger participants to dwell on the past, forward vection was expected to precipitate predominantly future-oriented thoughts
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