Environmental cues influence the unfolding and chaining of spontaneous simulations of future and past events.

Future and past events can come to mind spontaneously. Previous research has focused on the characteristics of future and past event simulations, but few studies have investigated the types of input that initiate these simulations. To gain insight into the underlying mechanisms, we used event and location cues to elicit spontaneous future and past simulations. We investigated two novel questions. How do event and location cues influence the spontaneous events reported? Do future events, like spontaneous autobiographical memories, occur in chained-event sequences consisting of multiple consecutively generated related events? In a vigilance task, 127 participants located a left-facing arrow among right-facing arrows. On 49 of 350 trials, participants encountered an event or location cue. On 10 occasions, participants audio-recorded off-task thoughts they felt comfortable sharing. We contribute four novel insights. Participants produced a greater number of future events for event than for location cues, whereas they produced a greater number of past events for location cues. For event cues, hypothetical future events were more frequent than planning. Spontaneous future simulations, like past event simulations, occurred in chained event sequences. Finally, the distributions of connections within future and past chains were influenced by the original cue. We integrate ideas from the Constructive Episodic Simulation Hypothesis and the dual-process account of deliberate and spontaneous future thoughts by treating constructive memory in terms of pattern completion.