The future harbours the potential for myriad threats to the fitness of organisms, and many species prepare accordingly based on indicators of hazards. Here, we distinguish between defensive responses on the basis of sensed cues and those based on autocues generated by mental simulations of the future in humans. Whereas sensed threat cues usually induce specific responses with reference to particular features of the environment or generalized responses to protect against diffuse threats, autocues generated by mental simulations of the future (...) enable strategic preparation for hazards that may not require an immediate response. The overlap of these mechanisms makes defence effective and versatile, yet can manifest as contemporary anxiety disorders in humans. (shrink)

Hoerl & McCormack discuss the possible function of meta-representations in temporal cognition but ultimately take an agnostic stance. Here we outline the fundamental role that we believe meta-representations play. Because humans know that their representations of future events are just representations, they are in a position to compensate for the shortcomings of their own foresight and to prepare for multiple contingencies.

Ainslie offers an encompassing and compelling account of willpower, although his big-picture view comes occasionally at the cost of low resolution. We comment on ambiguity in the metacognitive and prospective mechanisms of resolve implicated in recursive self-prediction. We hope to show both the necessity and promise of specifying testable cognitive mechanisms of willpower.

In psychology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and philosophy, “prediction” is widely recognized as central to cognition. Mental time travel into the future is the form of cognitive prediction most intimately connected to adaptive human functioning. It underpins explicit goal-setting, collaborative planning, and the pursuit of creative innovation. Theories focusing on prediction have a long intellectual history. Broadly construed, they offer perhaps the best opportunity yet for a global picture of neural and cognitive functioning. Exploiting this opportunity requires building bridges between prediction—as (...) instantiated in perception or reinforcement learning—and full-fledged mental time travel into the future. The surge of recent work on these topics indicates consensus about the promise of prospection for understanding diverse aspects of cognition, but subfields still lack theoretical synthesis. (shrink)