Methodological advances regarding mental time travel

Mental time travel is the cognitive capacity to situate thought in times other than the present, including episodic memory and episodic planning. Despite its significance in everyday life, the research to date is limited. Though different past- or future- oriented predispositions are related to different situations or task demands, research has been conducted exclusively in the laboratory. It is an inherently transient, variable phenomenon on the individual level, yet much of the literature relies on measures insensitive to this temporal and within-subject variability. This research addresses a major gap in the field by exploring mental time travel in an ambulatory assessment paradigm using mobile telephones as a response platform. Participants completed baseline questionnaires, followed by a short mental time travel questionnaire on twenty occasions across two days, on an individually randomised schedule. Results from this repeated measures data collection will be discussed alongside the methodological considerations of this novel approach.