How is a Thought that Emerges Here and Now Attributed to the Past?

During the last twenty years, many works have questioned the still dominant conception of memory, which holds that memories are the product of the activation of stored knowledge. On the contrary, memories are constructions that emerge in the situation of recollection. Moreover, the act of remembering must be considered as a process of attribution (SCAPE model) resulting from an inference that has its origin in the subjective sense of fluency associated with the process currently at work. This is why we suggest linking the SCAPE model to the PP (Predictive Process) model, because on one hand these two models are inferential models, and on the other hand they attribute an essential role to the evaluation of the processes in progress. To conclude, we propose that memory should no longer be considered exclusively as a mean of recalling the past, but as a mean of predicting the information that will be useful in reducing prediction errors. In other words, memory is made for the future (i.e., action to be performed and its consequences) considering the present.