Temporal contexts in IVR strengthen spatial scaffolding and phenomenology during autobiographical mental time travel

Mental time travel, the ability to relive specific past experiences and pre-live possible future ones, relies on episodic simulations of unique events that are richly contextualized and self-relevant. Traditional cueing paradigms (e.g., word lists, images) offer strong standardization; however, they may lack ecological validity and provide only minimal contextual structure, thereby limiting the full engagement of these experiential processes. We used an immersive virtual reality (IVR) cueing framework to test whether temporally framed virtual environments (VEs) enhance the richness of episodic simulations compared to a neutral immersive condition lacking temporal contextualization, and whether such effects differ between past- and future-oriented simulations. Thirty-one women completed a within-subject protocol comprising four immersive conditions to cue episodic simulations: a past VE, a future VE, and a neutral, context-free VE presented twice and paired with past and future simulations. After each immersion, participants recalled a specific past personal event or imagined a specific future one. Simulations were rated using a standardized scoring procedure indexing multiple dimensions of episodicity. Temporally framed VEs significantly increased episodicity compared to the neutral VE for both past and future simulations. The strongest effects concerned spatial aspects and phenomenological richness. Participants also reported relying on temporal cues provided by the VEs to support their simulations. These findings indicate that temporally framed IVR can enhance the spatial and experiential quality of episodic simulations in both temporal directions. Beyond highlighting the potential of IVR to increase ecological validity in cueing paradigms, these results are consistent with the view that contextual immersion may provide a cognitive scaffold for organizing episodic simulation and mental time travel.