The creative mental time travel: the role of creative cognition in the recall and imagination of autobiographical events

Episodic memory recall is characterized by a reconstructive process and provides a basis for mental time travel into both autobiographical past and future 1. This reconstructive process can be influenced by individual abilities and predispositions. Creative cognition (CC), which is described as the ability to flexibly associate and recombine information drawn from memory systems to produce original ideas 2, might be considered among them. However, if some studies have demonstrated an impact of memory on CC3, few studies have investigated the inverse relationship. The present research aims to explore if higher creative individuals elaborate their autobiographical past or future projections with different narrative and phenomenological characteristics in comparison to lower creative individuals.