Time Points: A Gestural Study of the Development of Space–Time Mappings

Human languages typically employ a variety of spatial metaphors for time (e.g., “I'm looking forward to the weekend”). The metaphorical grounding of time in space is also evident in gesture. The gestures that are performed when talking about time bolster the view that people sometimes think about regions of time as if they were locations in space. However, almost nothing is known about the development of metaphorical gestures for time, despite keen interest in the origins of space–time metaphors. In this study, we examined the gestures that English‐speaking 6‐to‐7‐year‐olds, 9‐to‐11‐year‐olds, 13‐to‐15‐year‐olds, and adults produced when talking about time. Participants were asked to explain the difference between pairs of temporal adverbs (e.g., “tomorrow” versus “yesterday”) and to use their hands while doing so. There was a gradual increase across age groups in the propensity to produce spatial metaphorical gestures when talking about time. However, even a substantial majority of 6‐to‐7‐year‐old children produced a spatial gesture on at least one occasion. Overall, participants produced fewer gestures in the sagittal (front‐back) axis than in the lateral (left‐right) axis, and this was particularly true for the youngest children and adolescents. Gestures that were incongruent with the prevailing norms of space–time mappings among English speakers (leftward and backward for past; rightward and forward for future) gradually decreased with increasing age. This was true for both the lateral and sagittal axis. This study highlights the importance of metaphoricity in children's understanding of time. It also suggests that, by 6 to 7 years of age, culturally determined representations of time have a strong influence on children's spatial metaphorical gestures.     

The Development of Young Children’s Mental Timeline in Relation to Emergent Literacy Skills

ABSTRACT

The abstract concept of time is conceptualized as moving linearly across space, known as the mental timeline (MTL). The direction of our MTL is consistent with reading direction. English speakers, who read left to right, think of past on the left and future on the right; the reverse is true of Hebrew speakers, who read right to left. However, it is unknown whether familiarity with reading direction facilitates the development of the MTL or whether it develops prior to becoming familiar with a language’s direction. This study examined the relationship between the development of the MTL and emergent literacy skills in English-speaking preschoolers and kindergartners. Results reveal a preference for spatially displaying time as moving horizontally from left to right in preschoolers, which is strengthened in kindergartners and predicted by emergent literacy skills. Results indicate that emergent literacy skills are related to the early development of the MTL, providing insight into the origins of the mental timeline.     

汉语背景下横纵轴上的心理时间线

采用反应区分范式, 以表示过去和未来的时间词为刺激, 对汉语背景下横、纵两轴上的时间表征情况进行了探讨。结果发现, (1)横、纵轴方向上都出现了STEARC效应; (2)右对角线方向上, 出现了服从横轴的减弱的STEARC效应, 且STEARC效应值呈正态分布。以上结果表明, 汉语背景下既存在从左向右的心理时间线, 也存在从上到下的心理时间线, 两种时间表征同时存在, 且横轴表征倾向于占优势。     

With the past behind and the future ahead: Back-to-front representation of past and future sentences

Several studies support the psychological reality of a mental timeline that runs from the left to the right and may strongly affect our thinking about time. Ulrich and Maienborn (Cognition 117:126–138, 2010) examined the linguistic relevance of this timeline during the processing of past- and future-related sentences. Their results indicate that the timeline is not activated automatically during sentence comprehension. While no explicit reference of temporal expressions to the left–right axis has been attested (e.g., *the meeting was moved to the left), natural languages refer to the back–front axis in order to encode temporal information (e.g., the meeting was moved forward). Therefore, the present study examines whether a back–frontal timeline becomes automatically activated during the processing of past- and future-related sentences. The results demonstrate a clear effect on reaction time that emerges from a time–space association along the frontal timeline (Experiment 1). However, this activation seems to be nonautomatic (Experiment 2), rendering it unlikely that this frontal timeline is involved in comprehension of the temporal content of sentences.     

Which Is in Front of Chinese People,Past or Future? The Effect of Language and Culture on Temporal Gestures and Spatial Conceptions of Time

The temporal‐focus hypothesis claims that whether people conceptualize the past or the future as in front of them depends on their cultural attitudes toward time; such conceptualizations can be independent from the space–time metaphors expressed through language. In this paper, we study how Chinese people conceptualize time on the sagittal axis to find out the respective influences of language and culture on mental space–time mappings. An examination of Mandarin speakers' co‐speech gestures shows that some Chinese spontaneously perform past‐in‐front/future‐at‐back (besides future‐in‐front/past‐at‐back) gestures, especially when gestures are accompanying past‐in‐front/future‐at‐back space–time metaphors (Exp. 1). Using a temporal performance task, the study confirms that Chinese can conceptualize the future as behind and the past as in front of them, and that such space–time mappings are affected by the different expressions of Mandarin space–time metaphors (Exp. 2). Additionally, a survey on cultural attitudes toward time shows that Chinese tend to focus slightly more on the future than on the past (Exp. 3). Within the Chinese sample, we did not find evidence for the effect of participants' cultural temporal attitudes on space–time mappings, but a cross‐cultural comparison of space–time mappings between Chinese, Moroccans, and Spaniards provides strong support for the temporal‐focus hypothesis. Furthermore, the results of Exp. 2 are replicated even after controlling for factors such as cultural temporal attitudes and age (Exp. 3), which implies that linguistic sagittal temporal metaphors can indeed influence Mandarin speakers' space–time mappings. The findings not only contribute to a better understanding of Chinese people's sagittal temporal orientation, but also have additional implications for theories on the mental space–time mappings and the relationship between language and thought.     

How linguistic and cultural forces shape conceptions of time: English and Mandarin time in 3D

In this paper we examine how English and Mandarin speakers think about time, and we test how the patterns of thinking in the two groups relate to patterns in linguistic and cultural experience. In Mandarin, vertical spatial metaphors are used more frequently to talk about time than they are in English; English relies primarily on horizontal terms. We present results from two tasks comparing English and Mandarin speakers' temporal reasoning. The tasks measure how people spatialize time in three-dimensional space, including the sagittal (front/back), transverse (left/right), and vertical (up/down) axes. Results of Experiment 1 show that people automatically create spatial representations in the course of temporal reasoning, and these implicit spatializations differ in accordance with patterns in language, even in a non-linguistic task. Both groups showed evidence of a left-to-right representation of time, in accordance with writing direction, but only Mandarin speakers showed a vertical top-to-bottom pattern for time (congruent with vertical spatiotemporal metaphors in Mandarin). Results of Experiment 2 confirm and extend these findings, showing that bilinguals' representations of time depend on both long-term and proximal aspects of language experience. Participants who were more proficient in Mandarin were more likely to arrange time vertically (an effect of previous language experience). Further, bilinguals were more likely to arrange time vertically when they were tested in Mandarin than when they were tested in English (an effect of immediate linguistic context).     

Do we map remembrances to the left/back and expectations to the right/front of a mental timeline? Space–time congruency effects with retrospective and prospective verbs

Recent experimental studies have shown that people code time in terms of a mental timeline which typically runs from left to right or from back to front. Determining the cognitive function of this mental timeline for language processing, however, is still an unsettled issue. Whereas the studies of Ulrich and Maienborn (2010) and Ulrich et al. (2012) argue against an automatic activation of the mental timeline for the interpretation of tense and temporal adverbials at sentence level, Sell and Kaschak (2011) observe an automatic activation for the processing of past- and future-related sentences in small stories. The present paper reports the results of three experiments which examine the processing of sentences with retrospective and prospective verbs (e.g., to remember, to regret vs. to expect, to announce) in present tense, which locate a second, embedded event in the past or the future. When temporal information was task-relevant, a space–time congruency effect emerged (Experiment 1). This suggests that the mental timeline is not only linked to overtly deictic linguistic material but may also be construed in a more intricate way through the compositional construction of sentence meaning. The congruency effect disappeared, however, when temporal information was task-irrelevant (Experiments 2 and 3), suggesting that the mental timeline is not functionally involved in the cognitive processing of these especially demanding two-event sentences. The results of the present study support the conclusion that the relevant factor driving an automatic activation of the mental timeline is not the number of linguistically expressed events, but might rather be the number of sentential units.     

Eye movements during mental time travel follow a diagonal line

Recent research showed that past events are associated with the back and left side, whereas future events are associated with the front and right side of space. These spatial–temporal associations have an impact on our sensorimotor system: thinking about one’s past and future leads to subtle body sways in the sagittal dimension of space (Miles, Nind, & Macrae, 2010). In this study we investigated whether mental time travel leads to sensorimotor correlates in the horizontal dimension of space. Participants were asked to mentally displace themselves into the past or future while measuring their spontaneous eye movements on a blank screen. Eye gaze was directed more rightward and upward when thinking about the future than when thinking about the past. Our results provide further insight into the spatial nature of temporal thoughts, and show that not only body, but also eye movements follow a (diagonal) “time line” during mental time travel.     

Both Earlier Times and the Future Are “Front”: The Distinction Between Time‐ and Ego‐Reference‐Points in Mandarin Speakers’ Temporal Representation

Mandarin speakers, like most other language speakers around the world, use spatial terms to talk about time. However, the direction of their mental temporal representation along the front‐back axis remains controversial because they use the spatial term “front” to refer to both earlier times (e.g., front‐year means “the year before last”) and the future (e.g., front‐road means “prospect”). Although the linguistic distinction between time‐ and ego‐reference‐point spatiotemporal metaphors in Mandarin suggests a promising clarification of the above controversy, there is little empirical evidence verifying this distinction. In this study, Mandarin speakers’ time‐ and ego‐reference‐point temporal representations on three axes (i.e., sagittal, lateral, and vertical) were separately examined through two tasks. In a time‐reference‐point task, Mandarin speakers judged whether the time point of the second picture was earlier or later than the time point of the first picture, while in an ego‐reference‐point task, they judged whether an event or phase had happened in the past or would happen in the future. The results indicate that Mandarin speakers construe an earlier‐times‐in‐front‐of‐later‐times temporal sequence and adopt the front‐to‐the‐future orientation.     

想象空间中物体搜索的阶段模型的证实

用因素实验证明,在故事阅读产生的想象场景中,位于其中的观察者对身体四周物体的搜索分为两个阶段：第一阶段是目标方位的判断,认知加工时间的模式是前＜后＜左＝右;第二阶段是注意指向目标方位,从而辨别目标物体,认知加工时间的模式是注意点＜注意点对面＜注意点左侧＝注意点右侧。这两个阶段没有交互作用。反应时依赖于被试的视点。     

Mirror reversal: Empirical tests of competing accounts

In a mirror, left and right are said to look reversed. Surprisingly, this very familiar phenomenon, mirror reversal, has still no agreed-upon account to date. This study compared a variety of accounts in the light of empirical data. In Experiment 1, 102 students judged whether the mirror image of a person or a character looked reversed or not in 15 settings and also judged the directional relation between its components. In Experiment 2, 52 students made the reversal judgements in 13 settings. It was found for the first time that a substantial proportion of people denied the left–right mirror reversal of a person, whereas virtually all of them did recognize that of a character. This discrepancy strongly suggested that these two kinds of mirror reversal are produced by different processes, respectively. A number of findings including this discrepancy clearly contradicted two accounts that are currently active: the one based on the priority of the up–down and front–back axes over the left–right axis, and the one based on the physical rotation of an object. All the findings were consistent with an account that considered mirror reversal a complex of three different phenomena produced by three different processes, respectively.     

Cross-cultural differences in mental representations of time: evidence from an implicit nonlinguistic task

Across cultures people construct spatial representations of time. However, the particular spatial layouts created to represent time may differ across cultures. This paper examines whether people automatically access and use culturally specific spatial representations when reasoning about time. In Experiment 1, we asked Hebrew and English speakers to arrange pictures depicting temporal sequences of natural events, and to point to the hypothesized location of events relative to a reference point. In both tasks, English speakers (who read left to right) arranged temporal sequences to progress from left to right, whereas Hebrew speakers (who read right to left) arranged them from right to left, replicating previous work. In Experiments 2 and 3, we asked the participants to make rapid temporal order judgments about pairs of pictures presented one after the other (i.e., to decide whether the second picture showed a conceptually earlier or later time-point of an event than the first picture). Participants made responses using two adjacent keyboard keys. English speakers were faster to make "earlier" judgments when the "earlier" response needed to be made with the left response key than with the right response key. Hebrew speakers showed exactly the reverse pattern. Asking participants to use a space-time mapping inconsistent with the one suggested by writing direction in their language created interference, suggesting that participants were automatically creating writing-direction consistent spatial representations in the course of their normal temporal reasoning. It appears that people automatically access culturally specific spatial representations when making temporal judgments even in nonlinguistic tasks.     

Is handedness recognition automatic? A study using a Simon-like paradigm

The authors used a modified Simon task (J. R. Simon, 1969) to assess the automatic recognition of handedness. Participants responded to the color of a circle in the center of the photograph of a right or a left hand, displayed in the center of the computer screen. A regular Simon effect was found for back views, whereas a reverse Simon effect was found for palm views. This pattern of results was found when the forearm was present (Experiment 2), when 1 finger at a time was rendered invisible (Experiment 3), and when the hands were connected to a body image (Experiment 4). When the hands were cut at the wrist, no effect emerged (Experiment 1). These findings suggest an automatic encoding of the relative position of the hand in relation to the body (imaginary or real) rather than the automatic encoding of handedness.     

Tactile recognition of mirror images by children: intermanual transfer and rotation of the palm

In order to evaluate the importance of the axis of stimulus presentation, inter- and intramanual recognition of mirror pairs was studied with the stimulus materials aligned along the front/back axis (whereas in previous work the mirror pairs were aligned along the left/right axis). Children were allowed to feel shapes with the whole hand, with only four fingers (excluding the thumb), or with only the index finger. After learning with one hand, recognition was tested in experiment 1 with the other hand; after learning with one orientation of the hand (palm down or up), recognition was tested in experiment 2 with the other orientation (palm up or down) of the same hand; after learning with one coronal alignment of the hand (to the left or right), recognition was tested in experiment 3 with the other alignment (to the right or left), but without rotation, of the same hand. Significantly fewer intermanual recognition errors were made on mirror pairs with the materials oriented along the front/back axis than in previous work when oriented along the left/right axis. This supports the suggestion that such errors arise when the stimuli are oriented along the left/right axis during formation of the memory trace. The same trend was unexpectedly obtained for intramanual recognition errors (after rotation of the hand). These errors (after hand rotation) are largely due to coding with respect to the hand; they are reduced when the hand is not aligned with the body axis, since then coding can also occur in relation to the environment.     

Karma or Immortality: Can Religion Influence Space‐Time Mappings?

People implicitly associate the “past” and “future” with “front” and “back” in their minds according to their cultural attitudes toward time. As the temporal focus hypothesis (TFH) proposes, future‐oriented people tend to think about time according to the future‐in‐front mapping, whereas past‐oriented people tend to think about time according to the past‐in‐front mapping (de la Fuente, Santiago, Román, Dumitrache, & Casasanto, 2014). Whereas previous studies have demonstrated that culture exerts an important influence on people's implicit spatializations of time, we focus specifically on religion, a prominent layer of culture, as potential additional influence on space‐time mappings. In Experiment 1 and 2, we observed a difference between the two religious groups, with Buddhists being more past‐focused and more frequently conceptualizing the past as ahead of them and the future as behind them, and Taoists more future‐focused and exhibiting the opposite space‐time mapping. In Experiment 3, we administered a religion prime, in which Buddhists were randomly assigned to visualize the picture of the Buddhas of the Past (Buddha Dipamkara) or the Future (Buddha Maitreya). Results showed that the pictorial icon of Dipamkara increased participants' tendency to conceptualize the past as in front of them. In contrast, the pictorial icon of Maitreya caused a dramatic increase in the rate of future‐in‐front responses. In Experiment 4, the causal effect of religion on implicit space‐time mappings was replicated in atheists. Taken together, these findings provide converging evidence for the hypothesized causal role of religion for temporal focus in determining space‐time mappings.     

Remembrances of times East: absolute spatial representations of time in an Australian aboriginal community

How do people think about time? Here we describe representations of time in Pormpuraaw, a remote Australian Aboriginal community. Pormpuraawans' representations of time differ strikingly from all others documented to date. Previously, people have been shown to represent time spatially from left to right or right to left, or from front to back or back to front. All of these representations are with respect to the body. Pormpuraawans instead arrange time according to cardinal directions: east to west. That is, time flows from left to right when one is facing south, from right to left when one is facing north, toward the body when one is facing east, and away from the body when one is facing west. These findings reveal a qualitatively different set of representations of time, with time organized in a coordinate frame that is independent from others reported previously. The results demonstrate that conceptions of even such fundamental domains as time can differ dramatically across cultures.     

Time does not flow without language: Spatial distance affects temporal duration regardless of movement or direction

Much evidence has suggested that people conceive of time as flowing directionally in transverse space (e.g., from left to right for English speakers). However, this phenomenon has never been tested in a fully nonlinguistic paradigm where neither stimuli nor task use linguistic labels, which raises the possibility that time is directional only when reading/writing direction has been evoked. In the present study, English-speaking participants viewed a video where an actor sang a note while gesturing and reproduced the duration of the sung note by pressing a button. Results showed that the perceived duration of the note was increased by a long-distance gesture, relative to a short-distance gesture. This effect was equally strong for gestures moving from left to right and from right to left and was not dependent on gestures depicting movement through space; a weaker version of the effect emerged with static gestures depicting spatial distance. Since both our gesture stimuli and temporal reproduction task were nonlinguistic, we conclude that the spatial representation of time is nondirectional: Movement contributes, but is not necessary, to the representation of temporal information in a transverse timeline.     

Time (also) flies from left to right

Everyday linguistic expressions in many languages suggest that back and front space is projected onto temporal concepts of past and future (as in the sentencewe are years ahead of them). The present experiment tested the psychological reality of a different space-time conceptual metaphor—projecting the past to left space and the future to right space—for which there are no linguistic traces in any language. Participants categorized words as referring to the past or to the future. Irrelevant to this task, words appeared either to the left or right of the screen, and responses were given by keypresses of the left or right hand. Judgments were facilitated when word position and response mapping were congruent with the left-past right-future conceptual metaphor. These results are discussed in the context of current claims about the embodiment of meaning and the possible mechanisms by which conceptual metaphors can be acquired.     

时间词呈现形式对空间-时间相容性效应的影响

采用时间区分任务探讨不同刺激形式对于空间-时间相容性效应 (space–time compatibility effect,简称STC效应)的影响。实验一采用倒置时间词作为刺激,发现标准的STC效应,即对过去词,“左”反应更快;对将来词,“右”反应更快。实验二采用镜像反转时间词作为刺激,发现反转的STC效应,即对过去词,“右”反应更快;对将来词,“左”反应更快。这些结果表明刺激呈现形式可以影响STC效应,并进一步支持了书写习惯是这种效应的起源。     

Whose hand is this? Differential responses of right and left extrastriate body areas to visual images of self and others’ hands

The extrastriate body area (EBA) is involved in perception of human bodies and nonfacial body parts, but its role in representing body identity is not clear. Here, we used on-line high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to test the role of EBA in self–other distinction. In Experiments 1 and 2 we compared rTMS of right EBA with stimulation of left ventral premotor cortex (vPM), whereas in Experiment 3 we compared stimulation of right and left EBA. RTMS was applied during a hand laterality task in which self or others’ hand images were presented in first- versus third-person view (Experiments 1 and 3), or while participants had to explicitly recognize their own hands (Experiment 2) presented in first- versus third-person view. Experiment 1 showed that right EBA stimulation selectively speeded judgments on others’ hands, whereas no effect of left vPM stimulation was found. Experiment 2 did not reveal any effect of rTMS. Experiment 3 confirmed faster responses on others’ hands while stimulating right EBA and also showed an advantage when judging self with respect to others’ hands during stimulation of left EBA. These results would demonstrate that EBA responds to morphological features of human body contributing to identity processing.