Cultural modulations of space–time compatibility effects

The representation of elapsing time may require spatial attention. In certain circumstances, this spatial representation develops from left to right. This is suggested by a performance advantage in responding short with the left hand and long with the right hand (spatial–temporal association between response codes [STEARC]). The present study tests whether one possible determinant of the directionality of the STEARC effect is cultural. In particular, we investigated whether reading/writing habits can affect STEARC direction by administering a visual time judgment task to Italian participants, who were exposed to a left-to-right reading/writing system, and Israeli participants, who mainly used a right-to-left system. The Italian participants showed a left-to-right STEARC effect, while this effect was not present in the Israeli group. The study demonstrates that cultural habits can influence the way in which spatial attention supports the representation of time, similar to the pattern found in other nonspatial domains such as numbers.     

Perceptual and motor congruency effects in time–space association

It is well established that temporal events are represented on a spatially oriented mental time line from left to right. Depending on the task characteristics, the spatial representation of time may be linked to different types of dimensions, including manual response codes and physical space codes. The aim of the present study was to analyze whether manual response and physical space codes are independent of each other or whether they interact when both types of information are involved in the task. The participants performed a temporal estimation task with two lateralized response buttons in four experiments. In the first experiment, the target stimuli were presented on the left side, at the center, or on the right side of the space, whereas the reference stimuli were always presented centrally. The reverse situation was presented in the second experiment. In the third experiment, both stimuli were presented in opposite spatial positions (e.g., left–right), whereas in the last experiment, both stimuli were presented in the same spatial position (e.g., left–left). In all experiments, perceptual and motor congruency effects were found, but no modulation of the congruency effects was found when both the perceptual and motor components were congruent. The results indicated that physical, spatial, and manual response codes are independent from each other for time–space associations, even when both codes are involved in the task. These results are discussed in terms of the “intermediate-coding” account.     

Spatial cueing in time–space synesthetes: An event-related brain potential study

Some people report that they consistently and involuntarily associate time events, such as months of the year, with specific spatial locations; a condition referred to as time–space synesthesia. The present study investigated the manner in which such synesthetic time–space associations affect visuo-spatial attention via an endogenous cuing paradigm. Reaction times and ERPs were recorded as 12 time–space synesthetes and 12 control participants did a peripheral target detection task, cued by three different types of centrally presented cues: arrows pointing left or right, direction words “left” or “right”, and month names associated with either the left or the right side of the synesthete’s mental calendar (e.g., “October” or “May”). Cues were followed by probes on the left or right side of the screen, and participants responded to the probes with button presses. Behavioral and ERP data suggested that for synesthetes, month words functioned more effectively as cues to direct attention in space. In synesthetes but not controls, a comparison of ERPs to probes cued by months revealed effects of cue validity on the P3b component peaking 370 ms post-onset and on the subsequent positive slow wave (pSW) observed 600–900 ms post-onset (both larger for invalid probes). No effects of cue validity were observed on early visual potentials (N1) for probes cued by months. The findings suggest that in these time–space synesthetes cue validity influenced post-perceptual processes, such as stimulus evaluation and categorization, with no evidence for enhanced visual processing.     

Are space and time automatically integrated in episodic memory?

The aim of the present study was to determine to what extent spatial and temporal features are automatically integrated during encoding in episodic memory. Both nameable and non-nameable stimuli were presented sequentially at different locations on a computer screen. Mixed and pure blocks of trials were used. In the mixed blocks participants were instructed to focus either on the spatial or the temporal order of the objects, as on the majority of the trials recall of this feature was tested (expected trials). However, on a few trials participants had to reproduce the other feature (unexpected trials). In the pure blocks either the spatial or the temporal order of the objects was tested on all trials. More errors were made on unexpected than on expected trials of the mixed blocks. Moreover, no primacy or recency effects were found when performance on the spatial task was plotted as a function of the temporal position. These results suggest that spatial information and temporal order information rely on separate encoding processes.     

Slowhand: Does time perception change in peri-hand space?

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - A variety of attentional and perceptual changes occur in peri-hand space, including increases in visual temporal acuity. These changes in cognition have been...     

Are space and time automatically integrated in episodic memory?

The aim of the present study was to determine to what extent spatial and temporal features are automatically integrated during encoding in episodic memory. Both nameable and non-nameable stimuli were presented sequentially at different locations on a computer screen. Mixed and pure blocks of trials were used. In the mixed blocks participants were instructed to focus either on the spatial or the temporal order of the objects, as on the majority of the trials recall of this feature was tested (expected trials). However, on a few trials participants had to reproduce the other feature (unexpected trials). In the pure blocks either the spatial or the temporal order of the objects was tested on all trials. More errors were made on unexpected than on expected trials of the mixed blocks. Moreover, no primacy or recency effects were found when performance on the spatial task was plotted as a function of the temporal position. These results suggest that spatial information and temporal order information rely on separate encoding processes.     

The hope of the future: The experience of pregnancy influences women’s implicit space–time mappings

It has long been observed that speakers employ spatial concepts “front” and “back” to talk about temporal concepts “past” and “future.” However, the direction of space-time mappings varies across cultures. According to Temporal Focus Hypothesis (TFH), people’s implicit associations between space and time are conditioned by their temporal focus. Here we tested whether pregnancy can affect Chinese women’s temporal focus and thereby influence their space-time mappings. One of the most striking characteristics of pregnant women noted by previous research is their future-oriented thought. Based on this, we predicted that pregnant women should be more future-focused. Consistent with this prediction, the results demonstrated that pregnant women tended to be more future-focused than non-pregnant women and demonstrated a greater tendency to conceptualize the future as in front of them, supporting the TFH. The current research offers a new perspective that culture-external factors such as pregnancy can also influence people’s spatialization of time.     

Developing number–space associations: SNARC effects using a color discrimination task in 5-year-olds

Human adults’ numerical representation is spatially oriented; consequently, participants are faster to respond to small/large numerals with their left/right hand, respectively, when doing a binary classification judgment on numbers, known as the SNARC (spatial–numerical association of response codes) effect. Studies on the emergence and development of the SNARC effect remain scarce. The current study introduces an innovative new paradigm based on a simple color judgment of Arabic digits. Using this task, we found a SNARC effect in children as young as 5.5 years. In contrast, when preschool children needed to perform a magnitude judgment task necessitating exact number knowledge, the SNARC effect started to emerge only at 5.8 years. Moreover, the emergence of a magnitude SNARC but not a color SNARC was linked to proficiency with Arabic digits. Our results suggest that access to a spatially oriented approximate magnitude representation from symbolic digits emerges early in ontogenetic development. Exact magnitude judgments, on the other hand, rely on experience with Arabic digits and, thus, necessitate formal or informal schooling to give access to a spatially oriented numerical representation.     

‘Resacralising’ secular space: new churches in a northern city, 1980–2012

This article explores the way new church congregations in a city in northern England, the city of York, are using religious and non-religious spaces in which to meet. These new congregations show a diverse approach to the material realm and especially to sacred space. Some use existing church buildings, some build their own structures. But many use a range of buildings: schools, community centres, a pub or the garage of a private house. An examination of these structures offers insights into ways in which faith engages with wider social realities and into contemporary religious history. This article will focus primarily on Britain, but casts an eye to developments elsewhere.     

Time–space synaesthesia – A cognitive advantage?

Is synaesthesia cognitively useful? Individuals with time–space synaesthesia experience time units (such as months of the year) as idiosyncratic spatial forms, and report that these forms aid them in mentally organising their time. In the present study, we hypothesised that time–space synaesthesia would facilitate performance on a time-related cognitive task. Synaesthetes were not specifically recruited for participation; instead, likelihood of time–space synaesthesia was assessed on a continuous scale based on participants’ responses during a semi-structured interview. Participants performed a month-manipulation task, which involved naming every second month or every third month in reverse-chronological order, beginning and ending with a target month. Using hierarchical multiple regression, we found that time–space synaesthesia corresponded with faster performance on both versions of the task. We propose that time–space synaesthesia may expedite the cognitive manipulation of time-based information. Our results also indicate that synaesthesia is far less unusual than widely believed.     

Sequence learning at optimal stimulus–response mapping: Evidence from a serial reaction time task

We propose a new version of the serial reaction time (SRT) task in which participants merely looked at the target instead of responding manually. As response locations were identical to target locations, stimulus–response compatibility was maximal in this task. We demonstrated that saccadic response times decreased during training and increased again when a new sequence was presented. It is unlikely that this effect was caused by stimulus–response (S–R) learning because bonds between (visual) stimuli and (oculomotor) responses were already well established before the experiment started. Thus, the finding shows that the building of S–R bonds is not essential for learning in the SRT task.     

More than just perception–action recalibration: Walking through a virtual environment causes rescaling of perceived space

Egocentric distances in virtual environments are commonly underperceived by up to 50 % of the intended distance. However, a brief period of interaction in which participants walk through the virtual environment while receiving visual feedback can dramatically improve distance judgments. Two experiments were designed to explore whether the increase in postinteraction distance judgments is due to perception–action recalibration or the rescaling of perceived space. Perception–action recalibration as a result of walking interaction should only affect action-specific distance judgments, whereas rescaling of perceived space should affect all distance judgments based on the rescaled percept. Participants made blind-walking distance judgments and verbal size judgments in response to objects in a virtual environment before and after interacting with the environment through either walking (Experiment 1) or reaching (Experiment 2). Size judgments were used to infer perceived distance under the assumption of size–distance invariance, and these served as an implicit measure of perceived distance. Preinteraction walking and size-based distance judgments indicated an underperception of egocentric distance, whereas postinteraction walking and size-based distance judgments both increased as a result of the walking interaction, indicating that walking through the virtual environment with continuous visual feedback caused rescaling of the perceived space. However, interaction with the virtual environment through reaching had no effect on either type of distance judgment, indicating that physical translation through the virtual environment may be necessary for a rescaling of perceived space. Furthermore, the size-based distance and walking distance judgments were highly correlated, even across changes in perceived distance, providing support for the size–distance invariance hypothesis.     

Syntax response–space biases for hands,not feet

A number of studies have shown a relationship between comprehending transitive sentences and spatial processing (e.g., Chatterjee, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5(2), 55–61, 2001), in which there is an advantage for responding to images that depict the agent of an action to the left of the patient. Boiteau and Almor (Cognitive Science, 2016) demonstrated that a similar effect is found for pure linguistic information, such that after reading a sentence, identifying a word that had appeared earlier as the agent is faster on the left than on the right, but only for left-hand responses. In this study, we examined the role of lateralized manual motor processes in this effect and found that such spatial effects occur even when only the responses, but not the stimuli, have a spatial dimension. In support of the specific role of manual motor processes, we found a response-space effect with manual but not with pedal responses. Our results support an effector-specific (as opposed to an effector-general) hypothesis: Manual responses showed spatial effects compatible with those in previous research, whereas pedal responses did not. This is consistent with theoretical and empirical work arguing that the hands are generally involved with, and perhaps more sensitive to, linguistic information.     

Connecting the dots from a distance: Does mentally traveling through space and time increase searching for life’s meaning?

As humans, we have the ability to travel beyond the present moment by considering past and future times as well as locations that are distant from oneself. An interesting possibility is that such mental travel to far-away times and places (vs. focusing on times and places closer to the present) may increase people’s desire to search for their lives’ meaning. Since searching for meaning involves the integration of separate life events into a coherent life story, mentally traveling farther away from the present may make people aware that their life stories include more than what is happening at this very minute. Such awareness, then, may increase their desire to ‘connect the dots’ between their life events by searching for some underlying meaning. Three experiments (N = 838) tested this prediction and found that greater (vs. lower) mental travel through space or time increased the search for life’s meaning.     

Do monkeys think in metaphors? Representations of space and time in monkeys and humans

Research on the relationship between the representation of space and time has produced two contrasting proposals. ATOM posits that space and time are represented via a common magnitude system, suggesting a symmetrical relationship between space and time. According to metaphor theory, however, representations of time depend on representations of space asymmetrically. Previous findings in humans have supported metaphor theory. Here, we investigate the relationship between time and space in a nonverbal species, by testing whether non-human primates show space–time interactions consistent with metaphor theory or with ATOM. We tested two rhesus monkeys and 16 adult humans in a nonverbal task that assessed the influence of an irrelevant dimension (time or space) on a relevant dimension (space or time). In humans, spatial extent had a large effect on time judgments whereas time had a small effect on spatial judgments. In monkeys, both spatial and temporal manipulations showed large bi-directional effects on judgments. In contrast to humans, spatial manipulations in monkeys did not produce a larger effect on temporal judgments than the reverse. Thus, consistent with previous findings, human adults showed asymmetrical space–time interactions that were predicted by metaphor theory. In contrast, monkeys showed patterns that were more consistent with ATOM.     

Task instructions determine the visuospatial and verbal–spatial nature of number–space associations

Evidence for number–space associations comes from the spatial–numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect, consisting in faster reaction times to small/large digits with the left/right hand, respectively. Two different proposals are commonly discussed concerning the cognitive origin of the SNARC effect: the visuospatial account and the verbal–spatial account. Recent studies have provided evidence for the relative dominance of verbal–spatial over visuospatial coding mechanisms, when both mechanisms were directly contrasted in a magnitude comparison task. However, in these studies, participants were potentially biased towards verbal–spatial number processing by task instructions based on verbal–spatial labels. To overcome this confound and to investigate whether verbal–spatial coding mechanisms are predominantly activated irrespective of task instructions, we completed the previously used paradigm by adding a spatial instruction condition. In line with earlier findings, we could confirm the predominance of verbal–spatial number coding under verbal task instructions. However, in the spatial instruction condition, both verbal–spatial and visuospatial mechanisms were activated to an equal extent. Hence, these findings clearly indicate that the cognitive origin of number–space associations does not always predominantly rely on verbal–spatial processing mechanisms, but that the spatial code associated with numbers is context dependent.     

Is there space for time in social psychology publications? A content analysis across five journals

To what extent can social psychology study individuals within social contexts without strengthening theories and methods appropriate for the analysis of individual development within changing societies? Theoretical and epistemological arguments stressing the centrality of a temporal dimension are reviewed. In order to generate an objective picture of the current research practices, a standardized content analysis was carried out on 699 empirical studies published around 2000 in the European Journal of Social Psychology (EJSP), the British Journal of Social Psychology (BJSP), the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP), the Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology (JCASP) and Social Psychology Quarterly (SPQ). This corpus was completed by a four‐point longitudinal analysis—1972/1986/1993/2000—of BJSP, EJSP and JPSP publications. Findings reveal that most empirical studies are carried out on student samples and do not include time‐ or age‐related explanatory variables, particularly in European mainstream publications. Structural analyses taking into account research methods, research topics, journals, and countries of the first authors suggest two oppositions that organize the field of research: a laboratory versus contextualized approach and a developmental versus monographic approach of social psychology. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The impact of inhibition capacities and age on number–space associations

Numerical and spatial representations are tightly linked, i.e., when doing a binary classification judgment on Arabic digits, participants are faster to respond with their left/right hand to small/large numbers, respectively (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes, SNARC effect, Dehaene et al. in J Exp Psychol Gen 122:371–396, 1993). To understand the underlying mechanisms of the well-established SNARC effect, it seems essential to explore the considerable inter-individual variability characterizing it. The present study assesses the respective roles of inhibition, age, working memory (WM) and response speed. Whereas these non-numerical factors have been proposed as potentially important factors to explain individual differences in SNARC effects, none (except response speed) has so far been explored directly. Confirming our hypotheses, the results show that the SNARC effect was stronger in participants that had weaker inhibition abilities (as assessed by the Stroop task), were relatively older and had longer response times. Interestingly, whereas a significant part of the age influence was mediated by cognitive inhibition, age also directly impacted the SNARC effect. Similarly, cognitive inhibition abilities explained inter-individual variability in number–space associations over and above the factors age, WM capacity and response speed. Taken together our results provide new insights into the nature of number–space associations by describing how these are influenced by the non-numerical factors age and inhibition.