foresight (psychology)

Foresight is the ability to predict, or the action of predicting, what will happen or what is needed in the future. Studies suggest that much of human daily thought is directed towards potential future events. Because of this and its role in human control on the planet, the nature and evolution of foresight is an important topic in psychology. Recent neuroscientific, developmental, and cognitive studies have identified many commonalities to the human ability to recall past episodes. Science magazine selected new evidence for such commonalities one of the top ten scientific breakthroughs of 2007. However, there are fundamental differences between mentally travelling through time into the future (i.e., foresight) versus mentally travelling through time into the past (i.e., episodic memory).