A motion aftereffect from visual imagery of motion

Mental imagery is thought to share properties with perception. To what extent does the process of imagining a scene share neural circuits and computational mechanisms with actually perceiving the same scene? Here, we investigated whether mental imagery of motion in a particular direction recruits neural circuits tuned to the same direction of perceptual motion. To address this question we made use of a visual illusion, the motion aftereffect. We found that following prolonged imagery of motion in one direction, people are more likely to perceive real motion test probes as moving in the direction opposite to the direction of motion imagery. The transfer of adaptation from imagined to perceived motion provides evidence that motion imagery and motion perception recruit shared direction-selective neural circuitry. Even in the absence of any visual stimuli, people can selectively recruit specific low-level sensory neurons through mental imagery.     

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.     

Time in the mind: using space to think about time

How do we construct abstract ideas like justice, mathematics, or time-travel? In this paper we investigate whether mental representations that result from physical experience underlie people's more abstract mental representations, using the domains of space and time as a testbed. People often talk about time using spatial language (e.g., a long vacation, a short concert). Do people also think about time using spatial representations, even when they are not using language? Results of six psychophysical experiments revealed that people are unable to ignore irrelevant spatial information when making judgments about duration, but not the converse. This pattern, which is predicted by the asymmetry between space and time in linguistic metaphors, was demonstrated here in tasks that do not involve any linguistic stimuli or responses. These findings provide evidence that the metaphorical relationship between space and time observed in language also exists in our more basic representations of distance and duration. Results suggest that our mental representations of things we can never see or touch may be built, in part, out of representations of physical experiences in perception and motor action.     

A motion aftereffect from still photographs depicting motion

A photograph of an action can convey a vivid sense of motion. Does the inference of motion from viewing a photograph involve the same neural and psychological representations used when one views physical motion? In this study, we tested whether implied motion is represented by the same direction-selective signals involved in the perception of real motion. We made use of the motion aftereffect, a visual motion illusion. Three experiments showed that viewing a series of static photographs with implied motion in a particular direction produced motion aftereffects in the opposite direction, as assessed with real-motion test probes. The transfer of adaptation from motion depicted in photographs to real motion demonstrates that the perception of implied motion activates direction-selective circuits that are also involved in processing real motion.     

Are things that are hard to physically move also hard to imagine moving?

Are objects that are more difficult to physically manipulate also more difficult to mentally manipulate? In our study, participants interacted with wooden objects modeled after the figures from Shepard and Metzler’s (1971) classic mental rotation experiment. One pair of objects was easy to physically rotate while another pair was difficult. They then completed a standard mental rotation task on images of these objects. Participants were slower to mentally rotate objects that were harder to physically rotate when they engaged in motor imagery. Further, this cost accrued with increasing angles of rotation. We verified this was the result of motor imagery by showing that the costs can be eliminated by using a strictly visual imagery strategy (imagining the objects moving on their own). These results reveal a striking constraint imposed by our real-world motor experiences on mental imagery, and also demonstrate a way that we can overcome such constraints.     

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.     

On the experiential link between spatial and temporal language

How do we understand time and other entities we can neither touch nor see? One possibility is that we tap into our concrete, experiential knowledge, including our understanding of physical space and motion, to make sense of abstract domains such as time. To examine how pervasive an aspect of cognition this is, we investigated whether thought about a nonliteral type of motion called fictive motion (FM; as in The road runs along the coast) can influence thought about time. Our results suggest that FM uses the same structures evoked in understanding literal motion, and that these literal aspects of FM influence temporal reasoning.     

Book Review: Rethinking the Trauma of War

Abstract

In this article I will adopt the viewpoint that current social issues, concerns and preoccupations are mirrored to some extent in films, and indeed culture in general - a view which has been expressed by many people in one form or another (see, for example, Caldwell [1996] or Sekoff [1989: 148] who says that ‘film must be understood as potentially embodying, disguising, challenging, containing, exploring, producing and so on the conditions of our cultural and personal lives, as well as the meanings we weave around them’). For example, the depression, unemployment and political polarization of the 1920s and 1930s produced two types of film. There were those which directly mirrored the political developments and social hardship of the times - such as the Charlie Chaplin films - and those which created a fantasy world of make-believe in order to escape the harsh realities of the day - for instance, the Hollywood Busby Berkeley musicals. So what are films telling us about society today?     

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).