摘要
情节式未来思考是将自我投射到未来以预先经历某事件的能力。本文综述情节式未来思考的年龄差异及其脑机制,重点阐述情节式未来思考的个体发生发展及其现象学特征的年龄差异,情节式未来思考年龄差异的脑机制主要涉及颞叶及楔前叶、海马以及额叶等脑区。未来研究应扩大正常人与特殊群体的年龄范围,关注情节式未来思考年龄差异的研究角度及纵向交叉研究,同时需结合内外部影响因素进行研究,这在认知老化中有重要的社会应用价值。
Episodic future thinking（EFT） is a projection of the self into the future to pre-experience an event. It plays a significant role in our daily life, especially in the process of planning, problem solving and delay of gratification. The present study explored the age difference and its underlying neural mechanism in EFT.The age difference of EFT focused on the occurrence and development of individual and phenomenological characteristics in age-related changes. Specifically, the occurrence of individual EFT was about four years old when children happened to imagine future and showed appropriate behavior according to possible future situations. The ability of individuals’ EFT improved as they grew older. For example, compared with children, adolescents created more episodic and semantic details when imagining future events. The age difference of phenomenal characteristics associated with projecting oneself forward into the future mainly includes the kind of details, the valence and intensity of emotion, temporal distance, novelty and vividness of events. Specifically, as to the details, young adults produced more details, whereas children and the old presented more general but not special ones; for emotional valence, old adults showed more positive effect. However, further research is needed to explore whether the effect exists in EFT; for emotional intensity, the old scored higher than the youth; for the temporal distance, former researches showed that children and adults generated more specific simulation of the near-future events; For the novelty and vividness of events, the age difference of EFT existed in the number of vivid images so that the young produced more vivid images compared to the old. To conclude, there were some age differences in phenomenological characteristics of EFT. Generally speaking, the development of EFT showed an inverted U function peaking at adulthood.The underlying neural mechanism in EFT referred to the brain-related activation of the age difference, which mainly included brain areas such as temporal lobe, precuneus, hippocampus, and frontal lobe. First of all, different cognitive processes activate different brain areas. Neuroimaging study showed that the episode of the old’s EFT depended on frontal lobe and temporal gyrus, which emphasized specific scene. Secondly, different age groups showed different activation models of hippocampus in EFT. The old tended to activate the right anterior hippocampus, whereas the youth activated the left part. It could be speculated that in EFT the elderly occupied more cognitive processes such as spatial memory and visual mental imagery. The youth called for more specific and episodic details about the cognitive processes, which to some extent explained the differences of EFT between the two populations. Thirdly, age difference existed in frontal lobe in different tasks in EFT. The whole-brain interaction analysis found the activation of the lateral prefrontal cortex when doing EFT, indicating the role of LPFC. To sum up, in EFT the youth and the old activated similar brain areas（e.g., temporal lobe, precuneus, hippocampus and frontal lobe） but differed in the intensity of activation.Future researches should enlarge the age span in both normal and special people, pay more attention to the research angle, longitudinal crossover studies of the age difference as well as the underlying elaborate neuro-mechanism, which needs to combine internal and external factors and will have vital social implications for the research of cognitive aging.
出处
《心理科学》
CSSCI
CSCD
北大核心
2016年第3期637-643,共7页
Journal of Psychological Science
基金
国家社会科学基金项目(14BSH080)
留学回国人员科研启动基金项目(未来情节思考的认知机制和神经机制)
中央高校基本科研业务费专项重大培育项目(SWU1509389)
西南大学心理学部研究团队建设项目(TR201201-2)的资助
关键词
未来时间
未来思考
情节式未来思考
年龄差异
脑机制
future time
future thinking
episodic future thinking
age difference
neural mechanism
