The Development Characteristics Of Mental Time Travel In Adolescents And The Relationship With The Sense Of Self-continuity

Mental time travel(MTT)allows one to re-experience one's own past by subjectively“locating” the self to a previously experienced event(episodic memory),or to pre-experience an event by locating the self into the future(episodic foresight).As an important component in self-identity,a sense of self-continuity means the self-integration in different time.The individual links their past,present and future with the self through narrative.This research selected high school sophomore and college freshmen and college juniors a total of 91 people as the objectives,and through three studies we surveyed the development characteristics of mental time travel in adolescents,the development characteristics of sense of self-continuity in adolescents and the relationship between mental time travel and the sense of self-continuity.In Study 1 we took the number of episodic details(event characteristics)and the subjective experience(phenomenological characteristics)which the subjects reported in the process of mental time travel as indexes.The results showed that the number of episodic details(event characteristics)increased with the growth of subject's grades,but the difference in grades was not significant.That means the development of mental time travel in adolescents is stable.Meanwhile there was no significant difference in grades in the evaluation of subjective experience.In Study 2 we focused on the development characteristics of sense of self-continuity in adolescents.We started by the different connections which reflected the sense of self-continuity,including self-event connections(the reporter links some aspect of the event to some aspect of the self,such as the personality,values and so on)and event-event connections(how one event lead to another,or how events share a common theme),the latter are viewed as a more advanced form of autobiographical reasoning(the activity of creating relations between different parts of one's past,present,and future life and one's personality and development)than the former.We then further classified and scored these connections.And the results showed that the frequency of event-event increased with the growth of subject's grades and the variation in grade was significant.That means the sense of self-continuity develops sustainably in adolescence.In Study 3 we used respectively correlation analysis,regression analysis and path analysis to establish the relational mode of a sense of self-continuity and mental time travel,to explain why the development of episodic memory and the sense of self-continuity had possible predictive effect on the episodic foresight.And the result showed that the episodic memory was effective and stable predictive source of episodic foresight,meanwhile episodic memory raise the frequency of event-event connections through promoting the increase of self-event connections and indirectly affect episodic memory.As an intermediary,the sense of self-continuity has guided the construction of individual events in the future.In conclusion,during adolescence,the development of mental time travel is stable and the sense of self-continuity is advancing to a higher level.As the base of episodic foresight,episodic memory continually disassemble relate details and supply raw materials of for reconstruction for the former.The sense of self-continuity is anchored with these events.On the one hand,it have contributed to find the relations among events,and develop and define the ego constantly.On the other hand,it help to form a more specific imagination of future relying on the self development.