ABSTRACT
Imagine for a moment attending a party for next New Years' Eve. Take 10 s or so to generate a specific mental scene for this upcoming party. Chances are that you can “see” some pretty specific details: You can identify some of the guests, you envision clothes, and you can imagine a configuration of people intermingling in a specific setting—potentially one you know very well. How is it that we are able to envision the future in such a specific way? That question forms the topic of this chapter. Specifically, we examine the capacity for episodic future thought (Atance & O'Neill, 2001) and consider the possibility that recollection of the past is a fundamental component of envisioning the future.
