Research Program / Claims / imagination-9
Through practice (such as imagining oneself in another time and space before sleep) to train imagination, you will be better able to handle current events and bring increasingly valuable information.
通过练习（如睡前想象自己在另一时空）锻炼想象力后，你将能更好地处理当前事件，并带来日益有价值的信息。
Concept imagination · Domain Belief Dynamics and Mind–Body Regulation · testable prediction · interface 3/3 · testability 3/3 · status untested · ★ fundable
This program treats the Seth Material as a source of hypotheses, not as doctrine to be validated. Lead dossiers are AI-compiled from the corpus with a book-and-session citation after every statement; literature reviews are AI web-search summaries whose references were all DOI-verified against Crossref; the agenda draft is an AI synthesis. None of it is Seth's original text, and none of it represents scientific consensus. English fields are machine-translated; the Chinese text is authoritative.
Seth sources (book §session)
Adjudicating experiment
A randomized trial with about 360 participants in three groups could be designed: scenario imagination of another time and place before sleep, equal-duration review of the same day's scenarios, and relaxation training with equal expectancy; 10–15 minutes each night, lasting 6 weeks, with 3-month follow-up. The primary outcome is the pre-registered composite score on unfamiliar problem-solving tasks; the secondary outcome is the VVIQ imagery vividness questionnaire; daily records and blind ratings are also used to verify handling of real-life problems. Sleep, compliance, and intervention expectancy are recorded; growth trajectories are examined at weeks 0, 3, and 6. 'Valuable information' must be scored separately for accuracy and practical utility.
Suggested paper title
Bedtime Scene Simulation and Transfer to Everyday Problem Solving: A Six-Week Pre-registered Randomized Trial
What it would overturn
If stable cross-task and real-life transfer occurs, this would revise the conservative assumption that benefits of short-term imagery training are largely confined to the trained content and lack far transfer.
Candidate labs / funders
Adam Haar Horowitz; Pattie Maes; Daniel L. Schacter
Specificity of Seth's formulation
It provides directional predictions of bedtime practice and improvement of ability over time, but does not specify whether the other time and space must exceed ordinary scenario simulation, nor does it define the value of information.
Note
Answering Question 3: Randomized controlled trials are feasible; isolated increases in VVIQ scores may reflect expectancy or questionnaire response changes, requiring conjunction with objective performance and untrained tasks.
Evidence (1, DOI-verified via Crossref)
Cite: Future Mind Institute, Seth Material Research Agenda, claim imagination-9, https://www.seth.org.cn/en/research/claims/imagination-9