ArticleMemory & cognition2021
The role of self-reference and personal goals in the formation of memories of the future.
Article in Memory & cognition, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM): A Systematic Review.Neuropsychology review · 2025Pooled it
- Nostalgia and Envisioning Reduce Pain Ratings in Healthy Adults and Individuals With Chronic Pain.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2026Article
- Self-serving biases shape the relationship between future thinking and remembering of elections.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Retention and transformation of internal experiences in autobiographical memory narratives.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Personal Goal-Related Mental Time Travel and Its Association With Resting-State Functional Connectivity in Individuals With High Schizotypal Traits.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2025Article
- Memory of Fictional Information: A Theoretical Framework.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025Article
- Remembering what we imagine: the role of event schemas in shaping how imagined autobiographical events are recalled.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Recent evidence suggests that some simulations of future events are encoded in memory and later recalled as "memories of the future," but the factors that determine the memorability of future simulations remain poorly understood. The current research aimed to test the hypothesis that imagined future events are better memorized when they are integrated in autobiographical knowledge structures. Across two experiments, we found that future events that involved the self were better recalled than future events that involved an acquaintance (Experiment 1), and that future events that were related to personal goals were better recalled than future events that were unrelated to goals (Experiment 2). Although self-reference and personal goals influenced the phenomenological characteristics of future simulations (e.g., their vividness and the clarity of event components), the enhanced recall of self-relevant and goal-relevant simulations was not simply due to these differences in the characteristics of simulations. Taken together, these findings suggest that the integration of simulated events with preexisting autobiographical knowledge is an important determinant of memories of the future.
Indexed as
Identifiers
33650020What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.