Emergence of Semantic Memory through Sequential Event Prediction and Its Role in Episodic Future Thinking: A Computational Exploration
Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: This study aimed to clarify the mechanism underlying episodic future thinking, which refers to the ability to generate prospective events in a specific time/location/context.Given that episodic future thinking involves generating predictions in a plausible order from previous internal predictions, we hypothesized that knowledge of sequential event prediction should underlie episodic future thinking.A parallel-distributed processing model was trained to predict the next event in the training sequence.After training, the model used the acquired knowledge to repeatedly selfgenerate event sequences (i.e., the model predicts the next event, and this prediction then forms the input of the next trial which in turn will trigger the next prediction).The resultant event sequences captured the episodic future thinking of normal participants and that of neurological patients when the model was lesioned.Moreover, the nature of knowledge acquired after training for sequential prediction of external events reflected that of episodic memory, schema-like knowledge and semantic memory, all of which have been found to contribute to episodic future thinking by past studies.
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2396624194