November 21, 2024 | New York City, NY, USA

Organizers

Karl K. Szpunar Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada	Donna Rose Addis Rotman Research Institute & University of Toronto, Canada

Participants
Jessica Andrew-Hanna, The University of Arizona, USA
Cristina Atance, University of Ottawa, Canada
Scott Cole, York St. John University, UK
Sarah Cowie, The University of Auckland, New Zealand
Arnaud D'Argembeau, University of Liège, Belgium
Julie Ji, University of Plymouth, UK
Lia Kvavilashvili, University of Hertfordshire, UK
Caitlin Mahy, Brock University, Canada
Brendan O'Connor, University at Albany, USA
Gabriele Oettingen, New York University, USA
Reece Roberts, The University of Auckland, New Zealand
Shayna Rosenbaum, York University, Canada
Daniel Schacter, Harvard University, USA
Qi Wang, Cornell University, USA
Alejandra Zaragoza Scherman, Aarhus University, Denmark

Overview
The capacity to think about the future is a core feature of human cognition that underlies the ability to anticipate and adapt to dynamic and changing environments. As such, the concept of future thinking has received considerable attention across various subdisciplines of psychological science. Cognitive psychologists study the cognitive and neural mechanisms that give rise to the capacity to think about the future, developmental psychologists study how this capacity emerges, changes, and dissipates across the lifespan, social psychologists study errors that people make when attempting to predict the future, clinical psychologists study biases in future thinking that characterize various mood and anxiety disorders, and comparative and behavioural psychologists seek to understand whether animals other than human beings are capable of using representations of the future to guide behavior.

Despite the ubiquity of future-oriented cognition as a construct of interest in psychology, the study of future thinking has largely been carried out with minimal crosstalk across these domains. However, this state-of-affairs has shifted in recent years, with an increasing number of publications bringing together the contributions of future thinking scholars from across the field. This emerging crosstalk has highlighted the fact that, among future thinking researchers, it is not yet clear how various concepts within and across subdisciplines are related to one another at the level of process and mechanism. Drawing these connections would not only sharpen the focus of the field but would also provide guidance for applied research that aims to determine how future thinking can be used to support personally and socially responsible actions. For instance, there exists growing evidence that imagining the future can help people to make decisions that support both their long-term wellbeing and sustainable behaviours that promise to benefit society. However, researchers from various subdisciplines across psychology characterize and label the capacity to imagine the future using distinct terminology, such as episodic future thinking—simulations of specific future events, fantasizing—daydreams about positive outcomes, and flash forwards—spontaneous mental images of future events. As a result, there is little agreement about how these various terms and their associated concepts map onto one another or about how thinking about the future supports adaptive and socially conscious behaviour.

As the study of future thinking continues to proliferate the field has come to a critical juncture that requires the development of conceptual clarity. We believe that such conceptual clarity can be gained by asking future thinking scholars to take stock of the key concepts of future thinking, the processes and mechanisms that are central to those concepts, and whether the processes and mechanisms that are relevant to any one concept (e.g., episodic future thinking) are also relevant to other concepts (e.g., flash forwards). To this end, this workshop will bring together an international and multidisciplinary mix of emerging scholars and leading authorities who study future thinking to collaboratively develop a conceptual map of future-oriented cognition.

Workshop Structure
The co-organizers will work with workshop participants ahead of the meeting to devise a key set of contemporary concepts that are central to the study of future thinking. The co-organizers will then assign each concept to a participant for whom that concept is especially relevant and ask them to prepare a brief (5-10 min) presentation reflecting their interpretation of the concept and its relevance to their own work. Finally, a subset of participants will serve as discussants and synthesize current theorizing around key concepts in the field. These various presentations will be the basis of both small and large group discussions around how best to integrate the fast-growing science of prospective cognition.

Please note that although the workshop is now full, several planned activities will help to bring the outcomes of the workshop to a wider audience at both the 65th annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society and beyond (see below).

Leading Edge Workshop Symposium
The co-organizers will host an accompanying symposium that will be open to all conference attendees on Friday, November 22 from 10am-12pm. The symposium will include the following presentations:

Episodic future simulation: Mechanisms, functions, and applications
Daniel Schacter, Harvard University, USA

Episodic future thinking: A developmental perspective
Cristina Atance, University of Ottawa, Canada

The role of autobiographical knowledge in future thinking: Insights into belief in future occurrence
Arnaud D’Argembeau, University of Liège, Belgium

Future thought and behavior change
Gabriele Oettingen, New York University, USA

Pragmatic nature of spontaneous future thinking: Findings from children and adults
Lia Kvavilashvili, University of Hertfordshire, UK

Dissociations in future thinking: Insights from aging and amnesia
Shayna Rosenbaum, York University, Canada

Graduate Student Training and Mentorship
The co-organizers have secured a Connection Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) that will allow 8 graduate students to attend the workshop. These students will also present a poster about their cutting-edge research on future-oriented cognition on Friday, November 22 from 6-7:30pm (Poster Session III).

Journal Special Issue
The outcomes of the workshop will be featured in a special issue of Psychonomic Bulletin & Review (more details to follow).