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.

最近的证据表明，对未来事件的一些模拟被编码在记忆中，后来被回忆为“未来的记忆”，但决定未来模拟可记忆性的因素仍然知之甚少。当前的研究旨在检验这样一种假设，即当想象中的未来事件被整合到自传知识结构中时，它们会被更好地记忆。在两个实验中，我们发现与自己有关的未来事件比与熟人有关的未来事件更容易被回忆（实验 1），并且与个人目标相关的未来事件比与目标无关的未来事件更容易被回忆（实验2）。尽管自我参照和个人目标影响了未来模拟的现象学特征（例如，它们的生动性和事件成分的清晰性），自我相关和目标相关模拟的增强回忆不仅仅是由于模拟特征的这些差异。总之，这些发现表明，模拟事件与先前存在的自传知识的整合是未来记忆的重要决定因素。