Facing the future: Memory as an evolved system for planning future acts |
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Authors: | Stanley B Klein Theresa E Robertson Andrew W Delton |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, 1042, New Zealand |
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Abstract: | All organisms capable of long-term memory are necessarily oriented toward the future. We propose that one of the most important
adaptive functions of long-term episodic memory is to store information about the past in the service of planning for the
personal future. Because a system should have especially efficient performance when engaged in a task that makes maximal use
of its evolved machinery, we predicted that future-oriented planning would result in especially good memory relative to other
memory tasks. We tested recall performance of a word list, using encoding tasks with different temporal perspectives (e.g.,
past, future) but a similar context. Consistent with our hypothesis, future-oriented encoding produced superior recall. We
discuss these findings in light of their implications for the thesis that memory evolved to enable its possessor to anticipate
and respond to future contingencies that cannot be known with certainty. |
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