The stability of visual perspective and vividness during mental time travel
Abstract
When remembering or imagining, people can experience an event from their own eyes, or as an outside observer, with differing levels of vividness. The perspective from, and vividness with, which a person remembers or imagines has been related to numerous individual difference characteristics. These findings require that phenomenology during mental time travel be trait-like-that people consistently experience similar perspectives and levels of vividness. This assumption remains untested. Across two studies (combined N = 295), we examined the stability of visual perspective and vividness across multiple trials and timepoints. Perspective and vividness showed weak within-session stability when reported across just a few trials but showed strong within-session stability when sufficient trials were collected. Importantly, both visual perspective and vividness demonstrated good-to-excellent across-session stability across different delay intervals (two days to six weeks). Overall, our results suggest that people dependably experience similar visual phenomenology across occurrences of mental time travel.
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Functionality in brain areas involved in visual perception and visual imagery is linked to experienced vividness and visual perspective during episodic memory recall.
“functionality in brain areas involved in visual perception [36,37] and visual imagery [38–41] have been linked to the experienced vividness and visual perspective during episodic memory recall [42].”
From Is episodic-like memory <i>like</i> episodic memory? (2024) · cites this paper as [42]
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References 166 · Cited by 17
- Authors
- Berg, J. J., Gilmore, A. W., Shaffer, R. A., & McDermott, K. B.
- Affiliations
- Washington University in St. Louis (US)
- Corresponding author
- Berg, Jeffrey J.
- Venue
- Consciousness and Cognition
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2021-07
- Volume
- 92
- Pages
- 103116
- ISSN
- 1053-8100 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3165749546
- Semantic Scholar
- cd7f7afff13fc642dd4eafd7b62afdeaa577d20f
- Cited by
- 17
- References
- 166
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 1.58
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- Consciousness and Cognition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- James S. McDonnell Foundation
- National Science Foundation (DGE-1143954)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Identity, Memory, and Therapy
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Keywords
- mental time travel, visual perspective, vividness, memory vividness, mental imagery, individual differences, visual phenomenology
- MeSH terms
- Humans, Individuality, Mental Recall, Memory, Episodic
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