ABSTRACT
Recalling past and imagining future personal experiences similarly rely on episodic memory processes to construct a complex mental representation—or image—of an event. This view of memory suggests that visual imagery may play a critical factor in how our past is recalled and future is envisioned. This chapter explores the ways in which imagery affects how episodic memory constructs representations of autobiographical events, focusing on the contributions of object and spatial subtypes of imagery. The reviewed work revealed that while spatial imagery contributes to the ability to imagine the general outline of events, akin to an event scaffold, when remembering or imagining an event, object imagery supports the recovery of specific perceptual details associated with the event that guide the experiential aspects of remembering and imagining. The chapter discusses how spatial and object imagery differences across individuals alter the way a person remembers and imagines life events, possibly explaining why two people can have very different descriptions of the same experience.
