Abstract :
Mental imagery of the future has clear clinical importance, although little
is known about intrusive, prospective imagery of personally-relevant events. Currently, no
measure is available to assess this. Aims: The Impact of Future Events Scale (IFES)was created
to assess the impact of intrusive, prospective, personally-relevant imagery. It was examined in
relation to predictions about dysphoria. Method: To form the IFES, the IES-R (a measure of
the impact of a past traumatic event on posttraumatic stress disorder symptomatology such as
intrusive re-experiencing) was adapted item-by-item to assess intrusive “pre-experiencing” and
imagery of specific, future events. Participants (N=75) completed the IFES and assessments of
depression, anxiety and general imagery use. Results: As predicted, the IFES significantly and
positively correlated with depression scores. Analyses using subgroups of non-dysphoric and
mild-dysphoric participants confirmed that the mild-dysphoric group reported significantly
higher IFES scores, indicating higher levels of pre-experiencing of the future and related
hyperarousal and avoidance. Conclusions: IFES provides a measure of the impact of “preexperiencing”
in the form of intrusive prospective, personally-relevant imagery, with sensitivity
to group differences on the basis of depression scores. Further research is required to extend
these finding into clinical depression and other psychopathological conditions.
