Raby and Clayton (2009) distinguished distinct categories that fall under the umbrella of futureoriented
behavior. They suggested that prospective thinking reflects a declarative form of future-oriented
thought and can be subdivided into prospective, semantic, and episodic future thinking. In their
description, semantic future thinking is similar to semantic memory in that it does not necessarily
involve projecting oneself into the future. That is, with semantic future thinking, individuals can imagine
a future event using script-based or general event knowledge. In contrast, with episodic future
thinking, individuals are part of the imagined future event and where, when and what aspects are
incorporated into the future event. However, when individuals imagine the future, they likely draw
on both semantic and episodic future-oriented thought processes. For example, when imagining a
future birthday party, individuals may incorporate elements that are likely to play a role in the party
such as a birthday cake, and also plan for novel circumstances of the specific future event such as the
best route to reach the party