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Temporal focus and time spatialization across cultures
Abstract
The temporal focus hypothesis (TFH) proposes that whether the past or the future is conceptualized as being located in front depends on temporal focus: the balance of attention paid to the past (tradition) and the future (progress). How general is the TFH, and to what extent can cultures and subcultures be placed on a single line relating time spatialization and temporal focus in spite of stark differences in language, religion, history, and economic development? Data from 10 Western (sub)cultural groups (N = 1198,) were used to derive a linear model relating aggregated temporal focus and proportion of future-in-front responses. This model then successfully fitted 10 independently collected (sub)cultural groups in China and Vietnam (N = 899). Further analysis of the whole data set (N = 2,097) showed that the group-level relation arose at the individual level and allowed precise quantification of its influence. Finally, in an effort to apply the model to all relevant published data sets, we included recent data from Britain and South Africa: The former, but not the latter, fitted the model well. Temporal focus is a central factor that shapes how people around the world think of time in spatial terms.
... This cognitive tool is designed to assess individuals' spatial representations of time in an explicit way. We will be drawing on previous research (Casasanto, 2009;Li & Cao, 2017;Callizo-Romero et al. 2020) to guide our preliminary examination and will use these results to compare the mapping of time in an explicit vs. a more implicit task. Furthermore, we will use the Temporal Focus Questionnaire to measure the degree of importance placed on the past (e.g., traditions) vs. the future (e.g., progress). ...
... Furthermore, we will use the Temporal Focus Questionnaire to measure the degree of importance placed on the past (e.g., traditions) vs. the future (e.g., progress). According to the Temporal Focus Hypothesis (TFH), cultural or subcultural factors can foster the participants to pay more attention to a temporal orientation and it has been demonstrated that the spatial arrangement of past and future events can be modified by the attention given to these temporal orientations (Callizo-Romero et al. 2020, de la Fuente et al., 2014. The central focus of this part is the Temporal Focus Hypothesis (TFH), which proposes that the spatial arrangement of past and future events is modified by the attention given to these temporal orientations (de la Fuente et al., 2014). ...
... The central focus of this part is the Temporal Focus Hypothesis (TFH), which proposes that the spatial arrangement of past and future events is modified by the attention given to these temporal orientations (de la Fuente et al., 2014). However, these temporal focus effects have been observed only on the sagittal axis (Callizo-Romero et al. 2020, de la Fuente et al., 2014. ...
This study investigates the Spatial-Temporal Association of Response Codes (STEARC) effect using facial age stimuli in a cross-cultural context involving Iranian and Italian participants. The research aims to explore how mixed reading habits influence the STEARC effect. Based on previous findings, we hypothesize that Italian participants, accustomed to a left-to-right orthographic system, will show faster responses to younger faces on the left and older faces on the right. Conversely, Iranian participants, who read from right to left but have mixed reading habits, might exhibit an opposite or weakened STEARC effect. The study also examines the temporal distance effect, predicting that reaction times will decrease as the age difference between target and reference faces increases. Our results confirm a significant Inverted STEARC effect in the Iranian sample, indicating for the first time that mixed reading habits can influence spatial-temporal associations with face age. The consistent observation of the distance effect across both cultures supports a universal cognitive mechanism in age perception. Additionally, the Temporal Diagram Task (TDT) and Temporal Focus Questionnaire (TFQ) provided insights into explicit and implicit temporal orientation, showing that cultural factors significantly influence spatial-temporal mappings. While no significant correlation was found between temporal focus and the STEARC effect, the TFQ results revealed that a majority of Iranians are future-focused. These findings suggest that cultural and linguistic factors play a crucial role in cognitive processes involving time and space, contributing to a deeper understanding of how reading and writing practices shape our perception of temporal and spatial associations.
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Link: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12608/69961
... Beyond sound symbolism, these results also contribute to research which has examined metaphorical associations of time. In particular, a range of research has examined the abstract concept of time in relation to space (e.g., Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;Starr & Srinivasan, 2021), emotions (Caruso et al., 2008;Van Boven & Ashworth, 2007) and cognitive representations of events (Caruso et al., 2013;Kane et al., 2012). Here we extend the perceptual metaphors/associations of time to sound as another perceptual dimension. ...
... For instance, Aymara, a language spoken in the Andean highlands, refers to the past with the word for 'front' and the future with the word for 'back' (Núñez & Sweetser, 2006). It is also important to note that some cultures tend to look more towards the future than the past (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;Gu et al., 2019;Peetz & Wohl, 2019) which may alter the time-sound symbolism-although note that the temporal focus tendencies of participants did not moderate the time-sound symbolism effects in our studies so far (Experiment 1). ...
... 605). The concepts of 'past' and 'future' are abstract but often understood in metaphors, such as spatial metaphors (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020). In the present research, we identified another dimension of perceptual associations with these temporal concepts: sounds. ...
We report evidence of sound symbolism for the abstract concept of time across seven experiments (total N = 825). Participants associated the future and past with distinct phonemes (Experiment 1). In particular, using nearly 8000 pseudowords, we found associations between the future and high front vowels and voiced fricatives/affricatives, and between the past and /θ/ and voiced stops (Experiment 2). This association was present not only among English speakers but also by speakers of a closely related language (German) and those of a more distantly related language (Hungarian; Experiment 3). This time‐sound symbolism does not appear to be due to embodied articulation (Experiment 4). In sum, these studies identify a robust time sound symbolism effect, along with tests of underlying mechanisms.
... People's sense of time differs across cultures (e.g., Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;Carstensen, 2006), and people with different cultural temporal focus may attach different monetary values to past or future events (Guo et al., 2012). Taking cultural values toward time (i.e., habits of attending to past or future events) as an example, people from specific (sub)cultural groups tend to focus more on past times and older generations, they are more observant of ancient rituals, and place more value on tradition, whereas people from other cultures can have a greater focus on the future, valuing economic development, globalization, and technological progress. ...
... People who are habitually attending to past events may metaphorically tend to place the past in front of them, "in the location where they could focus on the past literally with their eyes if past events were physical objects that could be seen" (de la Fuente et al., 2014(de la Fuente et al., , p.1684. If people, regardless of cultures, put important things in front of them and leave less important things behind (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020), habitually attending to the past is likely to make people give less priority to the future compared to the past. Temporal values can therefore have consequences for their pension planning and their actual behaviour, potentially influencing their wellbeing in the long run. ...
... Shipp et al., 2009). Past research shows that people's temporal values can explain their mental space-time mappings as to whether individuals put a past or future event in front of or behind them (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;Gu, Zheng & Swerts, 2019). Given that people usually prioritize important things in front of them and leave less important things behind, we propose that habitually attending to the past is likely to lead people to give less priority to the future compared to the past. ...
We study pension planning and financial wealth of natives and immigrants (N=1177) in the Netherlands, in relation to their temporal values (past/future-focused), financial knowledge, IQ, and other individual characteristics. We find that, compared to natives, immigrants are less financially literate and rely more on the government for their retirement income, but are more future-focused and think more about their retirement. Second, controlling for financial knowledge, IQ, saving intention, health, self-control and demographic factors, temporal values help to predict many aspects of pension planning: how much people think about retirement, their desired retirement age, whether they develop a plan to save for retirement, perceived saving adequacy, and home ownership. Furthermore, temporal values predict savings and financial wealth in 2016 and 2020, even after controlling for the financial situation in 2016. In conclusion, habitually attending to the past leads people to give less priority to the future compared to the past, which has consequences for people’s planning and behaviour such as retirement planning and financial well-being. Our results have strong implications for policies related to pension communication and contribute to the theory on relationships between economic decisions, time and cognition.
... This hypothesis is originally proposed for cross-cultural comparisons, but it has been applied to study individual differences within a given culture as well. For example, regardless of cultures, individuals who are more attending to the future are more likely to place the future ahead and the past behind them (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020). Interestingly, Guo et al. (2012) found that cultural temporal focus affects how people value future and past events. ...
... The general values of time (habitual attentional focus on the past or the future), surprisingly, have hardly been studied outside the context of a temporal diagram task in which participants label the past and future events in front of and behind a character (e.g. Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;Gu, Zheng, & Swerts, 2019). According to the temporal-focus hypothesis (de la Fuente et al., 2014), if people put important things in front of them and leave less important things behind, habitually attending to the past is likely to lead people to give less priority to the future than the past. ...
... Such results support our temporal values and well-being hypothesis, proposing that individuals' temporal values can affect their attentional priority of the future and past which further influences their behaviour and future well-being. Given that individuals who are habitually attending to past events may metaphorically tend to place the past in front of them, in the place where they could focus on the past as if past events were physical objects that could be seen (de la Fuente et al., 2014;Callizo-Romero et al., 2020), and given that people usually put important things in front of them and leave less important things behind, habitually focusing on the past is likely to lead people to give less priority to the future compared to the past. Therefore, temporal values 2 can have consequences for their planning and behaviour, influencing overall well-being in the long term. ...
We study the effect of people’s temporal values (habits of attending to past or future events) on their health, labour market performance and happiness. Participants’ (N=1177) data were initially collected in 2016 and then again in a follow-up study in 2020-2021. We find that habitually more attending to the future is negatively associated with diseases (heart attack; high cholesterol; diabetes; high-blood pressure; Covid19), but positively with health-related behaviour (eating vegetables and fruit; less smoking), health status (e.g., healthy weight; long life expectancy), income, hourly wage, financial satisfaction and happiness. Furthermore, such temporal values predict participants’ future situation of these aspects of well-being in 2020-2021, even after controlling for the 2016 baseline situation, IQ, self-control, patience, risk aversion and demographic information. Given that habitually attending to the past is likely to lead people to give less priority to the future compared to the past, we propose a temporal values and well-being hypothesis: Temporal values have consequences for people’s planning and behaviour, thus influencing individuals’ concurrent and longitudinal overall well-being. Our findings have strong implications for theories of time perception, measurements of temporal values, and for a better understanding of factors that influence people’s health, income, and happiness.
... We recruited our participants through the university's subject pool for course credit and tested them online on Zoom. We determined the sample size considering the different numbers in previous studies (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020) and our different stimuli categories to ensure equal distribution among them (16 different question forms created by choosing sentences from the pool). After the analyses, Using G*Power (RRID: SCR_013726), we found that we achieved a power of .98 for 3.02 odds ratio (OR) of multinomial logistic regression, which was the smaller OR in our metaphorical language-axis analyses. ...
... Temporal Personal Focus Scale (Shipp et al., 2009). We used the Turkish translation of the 12-item Temporal Personal Focus Scale (TPFS; Callizo-Romero et al., 2020). This scale contains four questions about past (e.g., "I think about things from my past."), ...
... We did not find a temporal focus effect in the exploratory analyses, unlike previous findings (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;de la Fuente et al., 2014). We think that there may be two reasons for this. ...
Language about time is an integral part of how we spatialize time. Factors like temporal focus can be related to time spatialization as well. The current study investigates the role of language in how we spatialize time, using a temporal diagram task modified to include the lateral axis. We asked participants to place temporal events provided in non-metaphorical, sagittal metaphorical, and non-sagittal metaphorical scenarios on a temporal diagram. We found that sagittal metaphors elicited sagittal spatializations of time, whereas the other two types elicited lateral spatializations. Participants sometimes used the sagittal and the lateral axes in combination to spatialize time. Exploratory analyses indicated that individuals' time management habits, temporal distance, and event order in written scenarios were related to time spatializations. Their temporal focus scores, however, were not. Findings suggest that temporal language plays an important role in how we map space onto time.
... Future-focused people tend to be younger (de la Fuente et al., 2014), more conscientious (Li & Cao, 2017), liberal (Lammers & Baldwin, 2018;Li & Cao, 2020a), optimistic (Li & Cao, 2020b), organizational, proactive, efficient, open to change (Kruglanski, Pierro, & Higgins, 2015;Shipp & Aeon, 2019;Shipp, Edwards, & Lambert, 2009), and anxious (Eysenck, Payne, & Santos, 2006;Rinaldi et al., 2017) than past-focused people. Culture can also modulate temporal focus (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;de la Fuente et al., 2014;Li, VanBui, & Cao, 2018). The future asymmetries described in the previous paragraphs have all been found in Western samples, which are arguably more focused on the future than the past. ...
... The temporal motion hypothesis proposed by Caruso et al. (2013) can account for individual and cross-cultural differences in the degree of future temporal asymmetry but not for a full reversal (a past asymmetry), as this would seem to imply movement backwards in time. Guo et al. (2012) proposed a different explanation: The variations in temporal asymmetry in Westerners versus East Asians are caused by the balance of attention and thinking devoted to past versus future, that is, temporal focus (see also Callizo-Romero et al., 2020 andde la Fuente et al., 2014, for a similar proposal regarding time spatialization). Here, it is important for present purposes to emphasize that both accounts share a prediction: The magnitude of responses toward the future and toward the past must be negatively related. ...
... The present study is part of a wider project aimed to assess time conceptualization across a wide range of cultures using a variety of tasks, some of which form the basis of the current article. The sample of the present work has recently been used in another published article (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020) in which we investigated how temporal focus affects temporal spatialization. In the present work, we focus on the question of whether people conceptualize the past and the future symmetrically or asymmetrically. ...
Does temporal thought extend asymmetrically into the past and the future? Do asymmetries depend on cultural differences in temporal focus? Some studies suggest that people in Western (arguably future-focused) cultures perceive the future as being closer, more valued, and deeper than the past (a future asymmetry), while the opposite is shown in East Asian (arguably past-focused) cultures. The proposed explanations of these findings predict a negative relationship between past and future: the more we delve into the future, the less we delve into the past. Here, we report findings that pose a significant challenge to this view. We presented several tasks previously used to measure temporal asymmetry (self-continuity, time discounting, temporal distance, and temporal depth) and two measures of temporal focus to American, Spanish, Serbian, Bosniak, Croatian, Moroccan, Turkish, and Chinese participants (total N = 1,075). There was an overall future asymmetry in all tasks except for temporal distance, but the asymmetry only varied with cultural temporal focus in time discounting. Past and future held a positive (instead of negative) relation in the mind: the more we delve into the future, the more we delve into the past. Finally, the findings suggest that temporal thought has a complex underlying structure.
... Interestingly, recent work suggests that both cultural attitudes and individual differences can influence the orientation of the sagittal mental timeline, independent of the spatiotemporal metaphors present in a language (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;de la Fuente, Santiago, Roman, Dumitrache, & Casasanto, 2014;Gu et al., 2019;Li & Cao, 2017;Sullivan & Bui, 2016). These studies measured participants' sagittal mental timelines using a temporal diagram task (Casasanto, 2009a), A. Starr and M. Srinivasan which presents participants with a top-down view of a cartoon character with one box in front of the character and one box behind (Fig. 2). ...
... A similar relation between participants' temporal focus and the type of mapping they produce on the temporal diagram task has also been found when comparing younger versus older adults, history and archeology students versus computer science and engineering students, and even museum goers visiting exhibits related to ancient versus contemporary art (de la Fuente et al., 2014;Gu et al., 2019;Li & Cao, 2017;Sullivan & Bui, 2016). A recent study that analyzed all existing data from these measures, as well as new data from additional cultural groups, indicates that this relation is robust: across more than 2000 participants from more than 10 cultural and subcultural groups, an individual's temporal focus score predicted significant variance in how likely that individual was to map the future to the front versus the back (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020). Taken together, these findings suggest that both individual and group-level differences in temporal focus influence how people map time onto the sagittal axis. ...
... In particular, if some children orient their horizontal/vertical mental timelines from top-tobottom, consistent with the orientation of vertical calendars, this would suggest that cultural artifacts that explicitly spatialize time, such as calendars, play a unique role in the organization of the horizontal/ vertical timeline, independent of writing direction. With respect to the orientation of the sagittal mental timeline, we investigated whether individual differences in children's temporal focus would have an effect on the orientation of their sagittal mental timelines, in line with what has been observed in adults (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;de la Fuente et al., 2014;Gu et al., 2019;Li & Cao, 2017;Sullivan & Bui, 2016). Because younger adults tend to be more focused on the future than older adults and are correspondingly more likely to endorse a front-future mapping (de la Fuente et al., 2014), one might predict that children would be even more future-focused and likely to map the future to the front. ...
Across cultures, people frequently communicate about time in terms of space. English speakers in the United States, for example, might “look forward” to the future or gesture toward the left when talking about the past. As shown by these examples, different dimensions of space are used to represent different temporal concepts. Here, we explored how cultural factors and individual differences shape the development of two types of spatiotemporal representations in 6- to 15-year-old children: the horizontal/vertical mental timeline (in which past and future events are placed on a horizontal or vertical line that is external to the body) and the sagittal mental timeline (in which events are placed on a line that runs through the front-back axis of the body). We tested children in India because the prevalence of both horizontal and vertical calendars there provided a unique opportunity to investigate how calendar orientation and writing direction might each influence the development of the horizontal/vertical mental timeline. Our results suggest that the horizontal/vertical mental timeline and the sagittal mental timeline are constructed in parallel throughout childhood and become increasingly aligned with culturally-conventional orientations. Additionally, we show that experience with calendars may influence the orientation of children's horizontal/vertical mental timelines, and that individual differences in children's attitudes toward the past and future may influence the orientation of their sagittal mental timelines. Taken together, our results demonstrate that children are sensitive to both cultural and personal factors when building mental models of time.
... Interestingly, recent work suggests that both cultural attitudes and individual differences can influence the orientation of the sagittal mental timeline, independent of the spatiotemporal metaphors present in a language (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;de la Fuente, Santiago, Roman, Dumitrache, & Casasanto, 2014;Gu et al., 2019;Li & Cao, 2017;Sullivan & Bui, 2016). These studies measured participants' sagittal mental timelines using a temporal diagram task (Casasanto, 2009a), A. Starr and M. Srinivasan which presents participants with a top-down view of a cartoon character with one box in front of the character and one box behind (Fig. 2). ...
... A similar relation between participants' temporal focus and the type of mapping they produce on the temporal diagram task has also been found when comparing younger versus older adults, history and archeology students versus computer science and engineering students, and even museum goers visiting exhibits related to ancient versus contemporary art (de la Fuente et al., 2014;Gu et al., 2019;Li & Cao, 2017;Sullivan & Bui, 2016). A recent study that analyzed all existing data from these measures, as well as new data from additional cultural groups, indicates that this relation is robust: across more than 2000 participants from more than 10 cultural and subcultural groups, an individual's temporal focus score predicted significant variance in how likely that individual was to map the future to the front versus the back (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020). Taken together, these findings suggest that both individual and group-level differences in temporal focus influence how people map time onto the sagittal axis. ...
... In particular, if some children orient their horizontal/vertical mental timelines from top-tobottom, consistent with the orientation of vertical calendars, this would suggest that cultural artifacts that explicitly spatialize time, such as calendars, play a unique role in the organization of the horizontal/ vertical timeline, independent of writing direction. With respect to the orientation of the sagittal mental timeline, we investigated whether individual differences in children's temporal focus would have an effect on the orientation of their sagittal mental timelines, in line with what has been observed in adults (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;de la Fuente et al., 2014;Gu et al., 2019;Li & Cao, 2017;Sullivan & Bui, 2016). Because younger adults tend to be more focused on the future than older adults and are correspondingly more likely to endorse a front-future mapping (de la Fuente et al., 2014), one might predict that children would be even more future-focused and likely to map the future to the front. ...
Across cultures, people frequently communicate about time in terms of space. English speakers in the United States, for example, might “look forward” to the future or gesture toward the left when talking about the past. As shown by these examples, different dimensions of space are used to represent different temporal concepts. Here, we explored how cultural factors and individual differences shape the development of two types of spatiotemporal representations in 6- to 15-year-old children: the horizontal/vertical mental timeline (in which past and future events are placed on a horizontal or vertical line that is external to the body) and the sagittal mental timeline (in which events are placed on a line that runs through the front-back axis of the body). We tested children in India because the prevalence of both horizontal and vertical calendars there provided a unique opportunity to investigate how calendar orientation and writing direction might each influence the development of the horizontal/vertical mental timeline. Our results suggest that the horizontal/vertical mental timeline and the sagittal mental timeline are constructed in parallel throughout childhood and become increasingly aligned with culturally-conventional orientations. Additionally, we show that experience with calendars may influence the orientation of children’s horizontal/vertical mental timelines, and that individual differences in children’s attitudes toward the past and future may influence the orientation of their sagittal mental timelines. Taken together, our results demonstrate that children are sensitive to both cultural and personal factors when building mental models of time.
... In this task, participants are asked to map a future event and a past event in relation to the person performing the events. The temporal diagram task has been successfully used in a number of priming and non-priming experiments on temporal cognition (e.g., Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;de la Fuente et al., 2014;Li et al., 2018;Li & Cao, 2017, 2018b, 2018aStarr & Srinivasan, 2021). To ensure that the task was also suitable for the purposes of the current study, we tested its potential to measure the priming of the mental timeline, using a reading task. ...
... For instance, the fact that most languages are ripe with spatio-temporal metaphors that directly reflect the way humans typically move through space (e.g., "the past is behind," "the future lies ahead"; Haspelmath, 1997) has traditionally been taken as evidence of how interaction with the physical environment shapes temporal cognition (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999. However, recent findings suggest that the link between temporal concepts and locomotor experience is not straightforward, as the spatial mapping of time can be substantially modulated by the degree of attention an individual devotes to the future and the past, respectively (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;de la Fuente et al., 2014;Torralbo et al., 2006; see also Bylund et al., 2020). ...
It is commonly stated that the direction in which we read and write influences our conceptualisation of the flow of time. However, research to date has only established a causal link between reading direction and temporal thought, leaving out the question of whether the act of writing indeed shapes the mental timeline. The current study addresses this gap by examining whether writing direction modulates how events are mapped onto time. Consistent with previous findings, results from a reading experiment showed that participants who read mirror texts (right-to-left orthography) indeed mapped time as flowing leftwards. However, contrary to prevailing assumptions, results from a series of writing experiments showed that participants assigned to a mirror writing condition (right-to-left orthography) displayed the same left-to-right mapping of the flow of time as participants in the standard writing condition (left-to-right orthography), despite progressive increases in mirror-writing training. It is suggested that the act of writing does not shape time concepts because it is not unambiguously unidirectional: the fine-motoric action of forming individual letters is multidirectional and thus interferes with the lateral time–space association obtained with the gross-motoric action of moving the hand/arm sideways.
... According to the hypothesis, those who value tradition are more likely to place the past in front of ego, whereas those who value progress are more likely to map the future in front of ego. The temporal focus may be conditioned by (sub)cultural variables or individual differences (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;de la Fuente et al., 2014;Li, 2017;Li et al., 2018) and may be malleable by the context of operation and laboratory priming of attention (de la Fuente et al., 2014;Li, 2018;Li & Cao, 2018a). ...
... People growing up with specific entrenched conventions or beliefs from different cultural communities might vary in their cultural values and habits (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020). The cultural traditions and rituals continually train people into a pattern concerning which object, concept, or even perception is valued the most and attracts more attention than others. ...
The temporal focus hypothesis (TFH) entails that individuals who value the past tend to conceptualize it in front, whereas individuals who value the future tend to map the future in front instead (de la Fuente et al., 2014). This varies as a function of culture, individual differences, and context. Here, we extend this line of inquiry by testing a contextual variable, namely COVID‐19 quarantine status, and an individual differences variable, namely future precautionary behavior towards COVID‐19. Contrary to what the TFH would predict, we show that participants map the future to a frontal position, regardless of individual attitudes and quarantine status. However, participants who displayed more future precautionary behavior were also more future‐focused than participants who displayed less such behaviour, but this did not predict their front–back mappings of the future. These findings suggest that individual differences may be stronger determinants of temporal focus than contextual variables.
... Another factor affecting the direction of sagittal mapping is the temporal focus, which is also different between the Chinese and English cultures. The Temporal Focus Hypothesis (TFH) posits that the conceptualization of the past or future as being in front is contingent on one's temporal focus (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;de la Fuente et al., 2014). For instance, Spaniards, who tend to focus more on the past, often perceive the future as lying ahead (de la Fuente et al., 2014). ...
... Numerous studies have consistently demonstrated that China's temporal focus diverges from that of North America. North Americans typically exhibit a more future-oriented mindset (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;Graham, 1981;Lyu, Du, & Rios, 2019;Spears et al., 2023;Spears, Lin, & Mowen, 2000), whereas Chinese individuals generally display a stronger direction towards the past (Brislin & Kim, 2003;Ji et al., 2009;Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck, 1961;Spears, Lin, & Mowen, 2000). Research by Guo et al. (2012) found that European Canadians prioritize the future, in contrast to Chinese and Chinese Canadians, who place greater emphasis on the past. ...
Mandarin speakers have different space-time mappings than English speakers, but how Mandarin-speaking children spatialize time is unknown. We explored the development of 3D time-space representations in Chinese children aged 3 to 5. 145 Mandarin-speaking children, divided into three conditions (Exp1: horizontal, vertical, and Exp2: sagittal axes), undertook an MTL task for ten picture stories. We analysed their choices in 3-step temporal events, intending to test their sequential and directional preference of time (e.g., order vs. disorder; left-to-right vs. right-to-left). The results showed that Chinese children acquired sequential temporal representations on the horizontal and vertical axes at age 4, similar to English-speaking children. However, their directional preferences appeared earlier than English children (Exp1). Furthermore, the sagittal axis had different patterns: sequentiality emerged only at age 5, but directional preference still has not emerged in the whole 3-5 age group. These findings emphasize that language and culture impact children's conceptualization of time.
... For example, norm violating behaviors may put individuals at an increased risk for infection, so more pathogen-avoidant individuals demonstrate a greater preference for ideological positions that encourage compliance with traditional norms (Schaller & Murray, 2008). According to the TFH, time spatialization depends on the balance of attention devoted to thinking about the past (tradition) and the future (progress) (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020). Since parasite stress can elevate traditionalism, this may cause individuals to focus their attention on past events and thus a greater proportion of past-in-front mapping. ...
... Meanwhile, although the effect of pathogen threat on implicit space-time mappings was significant, the effect size was likely to be small. This is not surprising since people's front-back mental space-time mappings are shaped by a complex of factors (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020). ...
According to the Temporal Focus Hypothesis, people's front-back mental space–time mappings are associated with their attention to the time frames of past and/or future. Based upon the findings that pathogen threats elicit preferences for social conservatism and traditions, we theorize that activating thinking about COVID-19, an ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019, will promote people's past-oriented thinking and increase their responses of past-in-front mapping. By manipulating saliency of coronavirus threat, our results showed that exposure to information about coronavirus created changes in a stronger past focus and caused a significant increase in the rate of past-in-front responses, which provides supporting evidence for the Temporal Focus Hypothesis. These findings suggest that the unprecedented pandemic not only harms people's health, but also can influence the way they construe the world.
... This preference for the lateral axis has also been reported in several psycholinguistic experiments in a variety of languages (Santiago et al., 2007(Santiago et al., , 2008Weger and Pratt, 2008) as well as in cultural artifacts such as timelines (Davis, 2012;Coulson and Pagán Cánovas, 2014) and calendars (Sinha et al., 2014), and has been experimentally connected with the direction of writing (Casasanto and Bottini, 2010;Bottini et al., 2015). Very recent research (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020) has suggested than even within the sagittal axis "whether the past or the future is conceptualized as being located in front depends on temporal focus: the balance of attention paid to the past (tradition) and the future (progress)". These authors examine a great variety of languages, including English data from Britain and South Africa (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020). ...
... Very recent research (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020) has suggested than even within the sagittal axis "whether the past or the future is conceptualized as being located in front depends on temporal focus: the balance of attention paid to the past (tradition) and the future (progress)". These authors examine a great variety of languages, including English data from Britain and South Africa (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020). ...
This study investigates how typological and metaphorical construal differences may affect the use and frequency of temporal expressions in English and Spanish. More precisely, we explore whether there are any differences between English, a satellite-framed language, and Spanish, a verb-framed language, in the use of certain temporal linguistic expressions that include a spatial, deictic component (Deictic Time), a purely temporal relation between two events (Sequential Time) or the expression of the duration of an event (Duration). To achieve this, we perform two different types of studies. First, we conduct an informational gain or loss analysis of 1,650 of English-to-Spanish translations extracted from parallel corpora. Secondly, we compare the frequency of 33 English and 27 Spanish temporal expressions in two similar written online corpora (EnTenTen and EsTenTen, respectively) and a television news spoken corpus (NewsScape). Our results suggest that English uses "deictic expressions with directional language" (explicitly stating the spatial location of the temporal event, e.g., back in those days/in the future ahead) much more frequently than Spanish, to the extent that such directional information is often excluded in English-to-Spanish translations. Also, sequential expressions (such as before that/later than) and duration expressions (during the whole day) are much more frequent in Spanish. These usage differences, explained by the variability in motion typology and metaphoric construal, open up the interesting question of how these differences in linguistic usage could affect the conceptualization of time of English and Spanish speakers.
... For example, people from left-to-right reading cultures mentally place short time durations and past events on the left side of space while long durations and future events are on the right side. Vice-versa, people from right-to-left reading cultures adopt a right-to-left directional representation of time Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;Fuhrman et al., 2011;Ouellet et al., 2010;Pitt & Casasanto, 2020;Vallesi et al., 2014). ...
To compensate for its sensory intangibility, humans often rely on spatial metaphors, gestures, and visual tools to represent the passage of time. These spatial tools, i.e. heuristics, range from everyday practices, such as directional hand gestures to indicate past or future events, to more abstract scientific conceptualizations such as the curving of space-time in the theory of relativity. Despite this widespread spatialization of time, it remains unclear to what extent space is an inherent component of the neural representation of time and its role in monitoring temporal durations. Here, we combine EEG-behavioral methods and neural network models of optimal decision-making to show that space is a late compensatory mechanism of time representation recruited when faster and non-spatial timekeeping mechanisms are suboptimally engaged. EEG analyses reveal a cascade-like process: spatial engagement in timekeeping follows the insufficient non-spatial encoding of time intervals, leading to delayed decisions on their length and slower response selection. Computational modelling further indicates that trial-by-trial fluctuations in the spatialization of time are explained by stochastic variations in the activity of the dopaminergic/noradrenergic (DA/NE) system and its interaction with the anterior cingulate cortex. These findings provide the first clear evidence of when, why, and how the brain recruits spatial mechanisms in the service of temporal processing and demonstrate that non-spatial and spatial timekeeping systems can be dissociated at both behavioural and electrophysiological levels.
... This result also corroborates the view that different levels of L2 proficiency have varying impacts on bilinguals' spatio-temporal metaphors (Gu, Zheng, & Gu, 2019b;Fischer et al., 2024). Nevertheless, spatio-temporal metaphors are influenced by many factors (e.g., Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;Li & Cao, 2018;Yang et al., 2022). The non-linear results here may also indicate that the choice of mappings is likely not solely affected by L2 proficiency. ...
Temporal-spatial metaphors can vary across languages, and such cross-linguistic influences may affect people's spatial conceptualisation of time. Mandarin (including co-speech gestures) has different spatial metaphors for time than Chinese Sign Language (CSL). This paper investigated whether native Mandarin speakers' mental space-time mappings would change after learning CSL for 14 weeks. Sixty native Mandarin speakers without prior knowledge of sign language took a pretest and posttest of space-time mappings before and after taking a CSL course. The results showed that participants changed their temporal-spatial mappings after learning CSL. Specifically, they had more sagittal space-time mappings and fewer lateral ones. They also had more "future-in-front/ past-in-back" mappings consistent with CSL space-time mappings. Furthermore, these changes were more significant in high-proficiency learners than low-proficiency ones. Our results demonstrate an effect of bodily experience on time conceptions and show that sign language can impact spatial-temporal reasoning.
... Особенности языка напрямую связаны с тезаурусом и в том числе с отражением времени и смысловых категорий, связанных с временем (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;Feist, Duffy, 2020). Поэтому междисциплинарные исследования на стыке психологии и лингвистики видятся перспективными для понимания вопросов, связанных со смысловым структурированием субъективной реальности. ...
Relevance: time is an obligatory attribute of both objective and subjective reality and plays an important role in the structural and functional organization of an individual. In this regard, it becomes relevant to study the semantic field representing the category of "time" in subjective space of an individual. Strengthening digitalization, a subsequent acceleration of human life, requires restructuring the processes of self-organization of an individual in the conditions of their new reality. Problem statement: time is a methodological interdisciplinary problem. Conceptual metaphors in the content of the thesaurus reflect the current state of society's attitude to time, its accounting, evaluation, use, structuring in activity. The study of ideas and the allocation of conceptual metaphors in relation to time through ideas can become a way to better understand people's treatment of time in their current life. Goal: analysis of adult's representations about time. Methods: associative experiment (in the format of limiting choices). Instructions for subjects to suggest three associations in the form of verbs, adjectives, nouns (9 association words in total) for the word "time". Results: the most frequent semantic categories of associations related to time are the categories of movement and speed, which are internally interconnected. The next most frequent category is "units of time measurement". The prevalence of time measurement in hours in the associative semantic field, as a reflection of the content of everyday consciousness of adults, was revealed. The next most frequently mentioned categories are "lifetime", "value of time", "activity time" and "waiting time". The least frequent category is "infinity of time". Statistically significant differences were obtained between the categories based on frequency. Conclusion: The core components of time concepts are the categories "movement of time", "units of time measurement" and "speed of time". The peripheral component of time concepts is the category "infinity of time". Thus, subjectively significant features of the concept "time" in adults were identified. In the middle zone of significance of the associative semantic field there are enlarged semantic categories "lifetime", "time value", "activity time", "waiting time". They reflect the course of human life in its normative version.
... Secondly exploring how time focus influences the long-term development of short video usage remains an important avenue for future research. Previous research suggests that a balanced temporal perspective, which integrates both past (tradition) and present orientations (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020), can enhance mental health and prevent internet addiction (Li and Lv, 2024). Future research could examine the relationship between this balanced temporal perspective and short video addiction. ...
Background
Short video addiction has become increasingly prevalent among college students. It can negatively impact their physical and mental health, yet its influencing factors and underlying mechanisms require further exploration. Time focus and self-control are recognized as critical determinants in shaping addictive behaviors.
Objective
Grounded in the I-PACE theory, this study examines the relationship between emotional and cognitive responses (various temporal focuses and dual systems of self-control) and short video addiction, while also investigating the mediating roles of inhibitory and initiation control.
Methods
Methodologically, it integrates both variable-centered and person-centered approaches, utilizing the Time Focus Scale, Multidimensional Self-Control Scale, and Short Video Addiction Scale. A total of 2,239 university students participated in the survey.
Results
The results revealed the following: (1) Past and present time focus were positively correlated with short video addiction, while future time focus showed a negative correlation. Inhibitory self-control was positively associated with short video addiction, whereas initiatory self-control was negatively correlated. Variable-centered analysis demonstrated that past and present time focus positively predicted short video addiction, with inhibitory self-control mediating the relationship between these time orientations and addiction. Conversely, initiatory self-control played a mediating role between future time focus and addiction risk, with a negative predictive effect on the likelihood of short video addiction. (2) Person-centered analysis identified four categories of short video addiction: non-addicted (12.68%), low-risk addiction (34.21%), moderate-risk addiction (42.20%), and high-risk addiction (10.89%). (3) Logistic regression analysis indicated that students with excessive past and present time focus were more likely to fall into the high-risk addiction category, while those employing inhibitory self-control strategies were more likely to be categorized into low, moderate, or high-risk addiction groups. Students utilizing initiatory self-control were less likely to develop high-risk addiction. Female students were more likely than male students to fall into the low, moderate, or high addiction categories, and only children were more likely to belong to the moderate or high-risk addiction categories than non-only children.
Conclusion
This study emphasizes the pivotal role of time focus and dual-system self-control in the intervention and prevention of short video addiction,further highlighting the role of emotional and cognitive responses in the development of short-video addiction. The implications of the findings, as well as the limitations of the study, are also discussed.
... These cultural variations impact not only daily routines but also social interactions and expectations. The balance between past-oriented values (tradition) and future-oriented values (development) influences how individuals from different cultures perceive time in relation to space [16]. The cultural perspective on time forms a rich landscape resulting from historical influences, societal values, and collective imagination, shaping both individual experiences and broader social structures, thus contributing to diverse cultural identities. ...
... In fact, the concept of time and the concept of space are naturally linked via our movements and vision: When we move our bodies to cover longer distances (or when we observe other people's bodies do it), we also take more time; moreover, we leave the places we visited first behind, whereas we look ahead while approaching places we will reach soon. This explains why many cultures consider that the past resides in the back and the future in front (e.g., I always leave my past behind; We are moving toward a new digital era) (although this ego-moving conception of time seems to be impaired in blind people; see Rinaldi et al., 2018), or that upcoming events move toward us until they reach us and move past us, becoming, at that point, past events (e.g., A new experiment is coming up) (Wierzbicka, 1973;Bender et al., 2005Bender et al., , 2010Bender et al., , 2012Bender and Beller, 2014;Rothe-Wulf et al., 2015;Sinha and Bernárdez, 2015;Moore, 2017;Bylund et al., 2020;Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;Feist and Duffy, 2020;Almirabi, 2021). An exception to this "FUTURE IS IN FRONT OF EGO" and "PAST IS IN BACK OF EGO" rule is Aymara language (an Amerindian language spoken in the Andean highlands of western Bolivia, southeastern Peru and northern Chile), whose speakers show linguistic and gestural signs of considering that FUTURE IS BEHIND EGO and PAST IS IN FRONT OF EGO, following the rationale that people can "see" the past, but not yet the future (Núñez and Sweetser, 2006). ...
We investigated whether writing direction and language activation influence how bilingual speakers map time onto space. More specifically, we investigated how Arabic-English bilingual speakers conceived where (e.g., on the left or on the right) different time periods (e.g., past, present, future) were located, depending on whether they were tested in Arabic (a language that is written from right to left) or in English (a language that is written from left to right). To analyze this, participants were given a task that involved arranging cards depicting different scenes of a story in chronological order. Results show that, when tested in Arabic, participants were significantly more likely to use right-to-left arrangements (following the Arabic writing direction), compared to when tested in English.
... Taken together, these and similar findings suggest that time concept representations can be organized within a complex three-dimensional space that includes horizontal, vertical, and sagittal axes (Boroditsky, 2011;Ding et al., 2020;Miles et al., 2011). Among the three axes, or Mental Time Lines (MTL, Bender & Beller, 2014;Bonato et al., 2012), the horizontal dimension has received particular attention in studies using reaction-time analysis (see von Sobbe et al., 2019, for a meta-analysis), although there is also considerable research on the sagittal dimension, such as that on the "Wednesday's meeting task" (Bender et al., 2010;Matlock et al., 2005) and the temporal focus hypothesis (Bylund et al., 2020;Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;de la Fuente et al., 2014). ...
In many Western cultures, the processing of temporal words related to the past and to the future is associated with left and right space, respectively – a phenomenon known as the horizontal Mental Time Line (MTL). While this mapping is apparently quite ubiquitous, its regularity and consistency across different types of temporal concepts remain to be determined. Moreover, it is unclear whether such spatial mappings are an essential and early constituent of concept activation. In the present study, we used words denoting time units at different scales (hours of the day, days of the week, months of the year) associated with either left space (e.g., 9 a.m. , Monday , February ) or right space (e.g., 8 p.m. , Saturday , November ) as cues in a line bisection task. Fifty-seven healthy adults listened to temporal words and then moved a mouse cursor to the perceived midpoint of a horizontally presented line. We measured movement trajectories, initial line intersection coordinates, and final bisection response coordinates. We found movement trajectory displacements for left- vs. right-biasing hour and day cues. Initial line intersections were biased specifically by month cues, while final bisection responses were biased specifically by hour cues. Our findings offer general support to the notion of horizontal space-time associations and suggest further investigation of the exact chronometry and strength of this association across individual time units.
... Dari, one of the Moroccan dialects, for example, uses a metaphor that couples the future with the direction forward. Beyond specific metaphors, Moroccans also pay more attention to the past and traditions, while Spanish people attach more importance to the future, that is, the "temporal focus" of the two cultures is different (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020). If learning from language is decisive for the sagittal timeline in the congenitally blind, one would expect differences between congenitally blind participants from these two populations. ...
Previous evolutionary perspectives proposed that the space–time mapping on the sagittal axis originates from visuo-locomotion coupling when walking/running forward. Accordingly, the congenitally blind could not have developed a sagittal mental timeline if the latter depends on such a visuo-locomotion coupling. However, this conclusion was reached in only a single empirical study (Rinaldi et al. in J Exp Psychol General 147:444–450, 2018), and its theoretical underpinnings are not entirely convincing as locally static and continuous auditory input undergoes a relatively similar change as function of self-locomotion, but this type of sensory-locomotion coupling is spared even in congenital blindness. Therefore, the present study systematically explored whether the congenitally blind show space–time mappings on the sagittal axis using different paradigms in three experiments. In Experiment 1, using a typical implicit RT task, the congenitally blind showed the same preferred space–time mapping in the sagittal dimension as normally sighted participants did. In Experiment 2, this space–time mapping occurred even automatically when temporal relations were task-irrelevant in a naming task. In Experiment 3, in an explicit space–time mapping task, the congenitally blind were more likely to locate the past behind and the future in front of their bodies. Moreover, most blind participants used spatial metaphors for their space–time mapping on the sagittal axis. These results supported the conclusion that the congenitally blind have a sagittal mental timeline, and that their sensory-locomotion coupling experience was either more similar to that of sighted participants or not critical for the space–time mapping. The present study, thus, also helps to clarify the origin of the sagittal mental timeline.
... While these binary conceptions may attempt to legitimize Western colonialism as developmental and progressive (e.g., Gilley, 2017), these views also provide simplistic worldviews that are insufficient for grasping the inherent dialectic complexities (Makdisi, 2002) of social construction and change over time across different locations. Various studies have strived to understand how time and temporal order have been established and changed across cultures and societies (Munn, 1992;Howell, 2003;Callizo-Romero et al., 2020). However, few studies have explored how non-industrialized countries moved to time-based modernization, especially outside their power centers. ...
The bulk of Management and Organization Studies deals with time as organization. Time is performed, organized, enacted, and as such is a locus of power. In this edited book, we stress the importance of organization as time. Time is an organizing force. The happening and becoming of collective activity, its technologies, its images, keep empowering, dominating or (more rarely) emancipating the fragile and ephemeral subjectivities of our world. The turn to digitality in all aspects of contemporary life has made the organizing power of time more pervasive than ever. How to describe organization as time? How to explore the relationship between becoming, duration, images, events, non-events or historicity and their relationships with power and emancipation? These are the rich and varied challenges seized by this book by a team of leading scholars interested in time and temporality in the context of management and organization.
... Other spatial representations of time stem from sensorimotor experiences related to cultural habits (Núñez and Sweetser, 2006;Casasanto and Bottini, 2014). In left-to-right reading cultures, the past is mentally placed to the left of the future and vice-versa in right-to-left reading cultures (Fuhrman and Boroditsky, 2010;Ouellet et al., 2010;Boroditsky et al., 2011;Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;Pitt and Casasanto, 2020). This phenomenon extends to the representation of time durations. ...
To get a concrete representation of its intangible flow, culture frames elapsing time along spatially oriented mental or graphical lines, which are organised according to reading habits, from left to right in western cultures. One of the strongest evidence for this spatial representation of time is the STEARC effect (Spatial-Temporal Association of Response Codes), which consists of faster coding of "short" durations with motor responses in the left side of space and of "long" durations with responses in the right side. Here, we investigated the STEARC as a function of response speed in two different experiments in healthy participants. Surprisingly, in both sub- and supra-second ranges, we found the STEARC only when decisions on time durations were slow, while no spatial representation of time was present with fast decisions. This first demonstrates that space slowly takes over faster non-spatial processing of time flow and that it is possible to empirically separate the behavioural manifestations of the non-spatial and the nurtured spatial mechanisms of time coding.
... Given that previous research suggests that people's sagittal space-time mappings are also influenced by their cultural attitudes toward time (e.g. Callizo-Romero et al. 2020;de la Fuente et al. 2014;Li and Cao 2018), participants' values towards time were also collected. The results showed that irrespective of whether the instruction language of the task was in CSL or Mandarin, deaf signers were significantly more likely to place the future event in the front box compared to Mandarin speakers, while controlling for their values toward time. ...
This chapter examines how Chinese people (Mandarin monolinguals; Mandarin-English bilinguals; deaf Chinese Sign Language (CSL) signers; Mandarin learners of CSL) use gestures and signs to creatively represent time. All groups spatialize time on the lateral, vertical, and sagittal axes, but differ in their choices of axes and directions of movements. For instance, Mandarin-English bilinguals produce more vertical time gestures in Mandarin
than in English. Mandarin speakers can produce past-in-front and past-at-back gestures, whereas CSL deaf signers only exploit past-at-back signs. Mandarin learners of CSL perform more past-at-back gestures than Mandarin-speaking non-signers. In short, cultural, linguistic, and bodily experiences can jointly shape how Chinese people express time creatively in different modalities.
... Por ello, la utilización de la psicometría asegura que se cuente con instrumentos que realmente midan lo que dicen medir y que arrojen resultados que puedan ser utilizados para tomar decisiones (International Test Comission, 2017). Futuras líneas de investigación podrían centrarse en estudios transculturales sobre perspectiva temporal y foco temporal incluyendo datos locales, ya que los datos de países latinoamericanos en general y Argentina en particular no suelen estar incluidos en este tipo de estudios (e.g.: Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;Sircova et al., 2014). ...
El estudio del tiempo siempre ha sido relevante para las personas en general, y para la ciencia en particular. Dentro del campo de la psicología se ha abordado el tiempo desde cuatro niveles (Laplanche, 1996 citado en Vásquez Echeverría, 2011). El nivel I refiere al tiempo cosmológico o el tiempo del mundo; el nivel II es el tiempo perceptivo o de la conciencia inmediata que poseen los seres vivientes (temporalidad); el nivel III es el tiempo de la memoria y del proyecto (o la temporalización en los seres humanos), alude al tiempo subjetivo. Por último, el nivel IV considera al tiempo de la historia, el tiempo de las sociedades o de la humanidad (historicidad). El presente trabajo se enfoca en el nivel III, el del tiempo subjetivo. Se expondrán los principales antecedentes del tema y luego se hará referencia a los principales resultados de un proyecto de investigación que se realiza en el marco de una beca doctoral CONICET que se propone el estudio de la temporalidad subjetiva en relación con variables sociodemográficas, de personalidad y estados psicológicos (Germano, 2017).
... If the results are consistent with our predictions, we are expected to find the pattern: the more future-focused participants tend to spend less time on social media, and the opposite is true for those who are past/presentfocused participants [9]. This can indicate some correspondence to the results from Mckay et al. [7]-pastfocused people usually spend more time on social media. ...
... We assume that this kind of convergence between L1 and L2 temporal thinking patterns can also be found in bilingual speakers of other Indo-European languages (e.g., Dutch-English, German-English, Italian-English, and Spanish-English bilinguals). In the past years a large body of research examined how native speakers of Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish think about time (e.g., Ouellet et al., 2010;Ulrich et al., 2012;Casasanto and Bottini, 2014;Vallesi et al., 2014;Callizo-Romero et al., 2020), and participants were shown to conceive of time as a sagittal-oriented spatial axis. It is noteworthy that a number of participants in these studies were bilinguals of L2 English (e.g., German-English bilinguals, Spanish-English bilinguals). ...
This study recruited English monolinguals, Mandarin monolinguals, and Mandarin–English (ME) bilinguals to examine whether native English and native Mandarin speakers think about time differently and whether the acquisition of L2 English could reshape native Mandarin speakers’ mental representations of temporal sequence. Across two experiments, we used the temporal congruency categorization paradigm which involved two-alternative forced-choice reaction time tasks to contrast experimental conditions that were assumed to be either compatible or incompatible with the internal spatiotemporal associations. Results add to previous studies by confirming that native English and native Mandarin speakers do think about time differently, and the significant crosslinguistic discrepancy primarily lies in the vertical representations of time flow. However, current findings also clarify the existing literature, demonstrating that the acquisition of L2 English does not appear to affect native Mandarin speakers’ temporal cognition. ME bilinguals, irrespective of whether they attained elementary or advanced level of English proficiency, exhibited temporal thinking patterns commensurate with those of Mandarin monolinguals. Some theoretical implications regarding the effect of bilingualism on cognition in general can be drawn from the present study, a crucial one being that it provides evidence against the view that L2 acquisition can reshape habitual modes of thinking established by L1.
... The divergence in space-time mappings between the two groups can be accounted for by their cultural attitudes toward time, with Spaniards having a dominant focus on futurity such as scientific advancement and technological innovations, and Moroccans focusing their attention predominantly on the past, such as respect for traditions and promulgation of cultural values. More recently, Callizo-Romero et al. (2020) tested the generality of the TFH in 22 African, American, Asian, and European (sub)cultural groups (N = 2097). The analysis on the entire dataset showed that temporal focus plays a critical role in shaping people's mental spacetime mappings, which suggests that the TFH is a cross-cultural principle of temporal spatialization. ...
Accumulating evidence suggests that people’s sense of the spatial location of events in time is flexible across cultures, contexts, and individuals. Yet few studies have established whether time spatialization is correlated with traumatic experiences. Based on findings that people tend to demonstrate a past time orientation when suffering from disasters, the present research investigated how earthquake experience is associated with temporal focus and time spatialization. Study 1 compared responses of residents in an earthquake-hit area with those of residents in a non-disaster area about two weeks after the disaster had occurred. The results showed that participants in the disaster area were more past-focused and produced more past-in-front responses than participants in the non-disaster area. In Study 2, a follow-up survey was conducted in the same areas ten months after the earthquake to examine whether the impact of disasters on spatial conceptions of time would decay as time elapsed. The findings indicated that participants in these two areas showed no differences in temporal focus and implicit space–time mappings. Taken together, these findings provide support for the Temporal Focus Hypothesis. They also have implications for understanding fluctuation in temporal focus and the high malleability of temporal mappings across individuals.
... In contrast, no such asymmetry exists between left-right motions, and there is hence no opportunity to develop a consistent internal representation of the relationship between space and time along the horizontal axis. Importantly, a vertical STA derived from physical constraints should not depend on the cultural differences in the conceptualization of time (Callizo-Romero et al., 2020;Pitt & Casasanto, 2019) or on differences in reading directions (Vallesi et al., 2014). This is a testable prediction that could be explored in future research. ...
In previous studies investigating the space–time compatibility effect, the experimental task always invites explicit spatial or temporal processing or both. In this study, we kept space and time irrelevant to the task. In a go/no-go task, participants (N = 50) were asked to either press a single button when they found the target or refrain from responding when there was no target in a search array. We manipulated the duration of the target-alone presentation that preceded a 7 × 7 search array consisting of either target plus distractors or distractors alone. The results revealed faster responses to shorter durations when the target appeared in the upper relative to the lower space. A similar effect also appeared along the diagonal axis with faster responses to shorter durations in upper-left relative to lower-right space. In contrast, no such difference was found along the horizontal axis. We hypothesize that vertical and diagonal space–time associations arise from the grounding of mental representation of time in physical experiences.
Was the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic associated with young adults’ religiosity and time-related cultural values? If so, were there also associated changes in peoples’ spatio-temporal preferences as predicted by the Temporal Focus Hypothesis? We used a behavioral task and three questionnaires across young participants from eight cultures: Bosniaks, Chinese, Croats, Moroccans, Serbs, Spaniards, Turks, and U.S. Americans. In Study 1, we compared two matched samples, one collected before the pandemic (N = 497) and the other collected during the pandemic (N = 497). In Study 2, we used the entire sample of young participants collected only during the pandemic (N = 893). The results from Study 1 showed that young adults collected during the pandemic (compared to before the pandemic) were less religious (Hypothesis 1), more future-focused in their temporal values (Hypothesis 2), and represented the future in front of them to a greater extent (Hypothesis 3). In Study 2, we observed that the more concerned the participants were by the pandemic, the lower their religiosity (Hypothesis 4), the greater their future focus (Hypothesis 5), and the greater their tendency to represent the future in front (Hypothesis 6). This pattern of results held across cultural groups with varying religiosity levels. Our findings show that during the pandemic, young people’s religiosity seemed to decline, and their focus on the future increased. This suggests the possible role of age and generation in coping strategies.
This chapter puts forward an argument for studying embodiment, and embodied memory in particular, as a stylistic phenomenon. It introduces the concept of body memory with reference to the embodied cognition hypothesis in cognitive linguistics and experimental evidence on the role of the body in remembering. It then zooms in on the main linguistic tools used in the book’s analyses, the notion of construal in Cognitive Grammar and conceptual metaphors that allow for understanding the passage of time in bodily terms. The chapter furthermore provides a territory-mapping discussion of sensory memory in cognitive science and particularly the psychological phenomenon of mental time travel. Lastly, the book’s stylistic take on the lyric and the overall structure of the book are presented.
The existence of a consistent horizontal spatial-conceptual mapping for words denoting time is a well-established phenomenon. For example, words related to the past or future (e.g., yesterday/tomorrow) facilitate respective leftward/rightward attentional shifts and responses, suggesting the visual-spatial grounding of temporal semantics, at least in the native language (L1). To examine whether similar horizontal bias also accompanies access to time-related words in a second language (L2), we tested 53 Russian-English (Experiment 1) and 48 German-English (Experiment 2) bilinguals, who classified randomly presented L1 and L2 time-related words as past- or future-related using left or right response keys. The predicted spatial congruency effect was registered in all tested languages and, furthermore, was positively associated with higher L2 proficiency in Experiment 2. Our findings (1) support the notion of horizontal spatial-conceptual mapping in diverse L1s, (2) demonstrate the existence of a similar spatial bias when processing temporal words in L2, and (3) show that the strength of time-space association in L2 may depend on individual L2 proficiency.
The mental lexicon offers a window into the configuration of conceptual domains such as space and time, which has been labeled as concrete the former and abstract the latter in the current embodiment approach to cognition. Space has a phonological and semantic value in sign languages, but not in spoken languages. Additionally, the representation of time by spatial means is robust in oral and sign languages. This research asks if Deaf signers and hearing nonsigners have the same conceptual organization of those domains. In their respective languages, sixty-two participants made a repeated free word association task. These results showed that the studied populations have a little overlap in the associates evocated for each clue. The analysis of the preferences of the semantic relations of the pairs clue-associate showed a greater tendency of the Deaf signers to establish thematic relations. In contrast, the hearing participants indicated a bias toward taxonomic relations. The results suggest that the abstractness or concreteness of concepts may be modulated by factors associated with linguistic modalities. However, in this compared free association norms factors related to the language deprivation of Deaf, the asymmetries in the cross-modal language contact and cross-modal borrowing were not exhaustively controlled.
According to the Temporal Focus Hypothesis, people’s orientations of sagittal spatiotemporal mappings are conditioned by their characteristic patterns of attention to the past and/or future. While a growing body of research has investigated how a variety of psychological, social, and environmental factors associated with temporal focus shape implicit space-time mappings, little is known about whether the degree of entropy in the visual context influences spatial conceptions of time. Based on the findings that high-entropy images invoke a past-focused mindset and low-entropy images invoke a future-focused mindset, the current work explores how entropy impacts people’s temporal focus and mental representations of time. In Study 1 involving a self-report measure of temporal focus, we found that while high-entropy images increased Chinese students’ attention to the past and led to more past-in-front responses, low-entropy images increased Chinese students’ attention to the future and led to more future-in-front responses. Using both self-reported measures and other-report ratings of temporal focus, Study 2 conceptually replicated the findings of Study 1 in a more diverse population. Considered together, these results bolster support for the Temporal Focus Hypothesis that entropy triggers corresponding changes in temporal focus and in mental sagittal space-time mappings.
The Freedom of Words is for anyone interested in understanding the role of body and language in cognition and how humans developed the sophisticated ability to use abstract concepts like 'freedom' and 'thinking'. This volume adopts a transdisciplinary perspective, including philosophy, semiotics, psychology, and neuroscience, to show how language, as a tool, shapes our minds and influences our interaction with the physical and social environment. It develops a theory showing how abstract concepts in their different varieties enhance cognition and profoundly influence our social and affective life. It addresses how children learn such abstract concepts, details how they vary across languages and cultures, and outlines the link between abstractness and the capability to detect inner bodily signals. Overall, the book shows how words – abstract words in particular, because of their indeterminate and open character – grant us freedom.
Chapter 6 illustrates why abstract concepts can be physical tools that modify our perception and interaction with the environment. It focuses on the relationship between abstract concepts and perception, both of the external world and the body. In section 6.1, I describe studies showing the importance of interoception, the ability to detect inner bodily signals for abstract concepts, particularly emotional ones, and contend that they might enhance this capability. The second section illustrates research showing how abstract concepts rely on sensorimotor experience through a metaphorical mapping mechanism. Although metaphorical mapping is powerful, other mechanisms beyond it, and primarily linguistic and social experience, might contribute to explaining abstractness. Finally, I describe how languages and cultures differently influence abstract concepts. A variety of examples, spanning from the concrete concept of container to the abstract concept of time, suggest that abstract concepts are more flexible and variable across languages than concrete concepts.
Previous evolutionary perspectives proposed strongly that the space-time mapping on the sagittal axis originates from visual-locomotor coupling when walking/running forward. Thus, the congenital blind could not have the sagittal mental timeline. However, this conclusion was reached with single empirical evidence (Rinaldi et al., 2018) and requires corroboration from converging evidence using diverse methodologies. The present study systematically explored whether the congenital blind has space-time mapping on the sagittal axis using different paradigms in three experiments. In Experiment 1, the congenital blind showed preferred space-time mapping in the sagittal dimension as normal sighted using a typical implicit RT task. In Experiment 2, this space-time mapping could even occur automatically when using a temporal judgment irrelevant naming task. In Experiment 3, the congenital blind was more likely to put the past time behind the body and to put the future time in front of the body in an explicit space-time mapping task. Moreover, most blinds use spatial metaphors to make this space-time mapping on the sagittal axis. These results support that the congenital blind could have a sagittal mental timeline, and the visual-locomotor coupling experience was not critical for this space-time mapping. Taken together, the present study helps to clarify the long-standing debate on the origin of the sagittal mental timeline.
Kemmerer's paper convincingly claims that the grounded cognition model (GCM) entails linguistic relativity. Here, we underline that tackling linguistic relativity and cultural differences is vital for GCM. First, it allows GCM to focus more on flexible rather than stable aspects of cognition. Second, it highlights the centrality of linguistic experience for human cognition. While GCM-inspired research underscored the similarity between linguistic and nonlinguistic concepts, it is now paramount to understand when and how language(s) influence knowledge. To this aim, we argue that linguistic variation might be particularly relevant for more abstract concepts-which are more debatable and open to revisions.
According to the Temporal Focus Hypothesis, people’s sagittal mental space-time mappings are conditioned by their temporal-focus attention. Based on this, it can be predicted that, by virtue of their future-oriented thinking, individuals with high anxiety should be more likely to think about time according to the future-in-front mapping than those with low anxiety. Utilizing a combined correlational and experimental approach, we found converging evidence for this prediction. Studies 1 and 2 found that individuals higher in dispositional anxiety and state anxiety, who characteristically worry about the future, were more likely to conceptualize the future as in front of them and the past as behind than individuals lower in dispositional anxiety and state anxiety. Study 3 showed that participants who were induced with anxiety mood tended to map the future on a frontal position, compared to those in the baseline condition. These findings shed further light on the Temporal Focus Hypothesis, thus providing the first experimental evidence that emotional experience can influence people’s temporal-focus attention in determining their metaphorical sagittal orientation of time.
In this paper, we argue that adopting an inclusive approach where diverse cultures are represented in research is of prime importance for cognitive psychology. The overrepresentation of participant samples and researchers from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) cultures limits the generalizability of findings and fails to capture potential sources of variability, impeding understanding of human cognition. In an analysis of articles in representative cognitive psychology journals over the five-year period of 2016–2020, we find that only approximately 7% of articles consider culture, broadly defined. Of these articles, a majority (83%) focus on language or bilingualism, with small numbers of articles considering other aspects of culture. We argue that methodology and theory developed in the last century of cognitive research not only can be leveraged, but will be enriched by greater diversity in both populations and researchers. Such advances pave the way to uncover cognitive processes that may be universal or systematically differ as a function of cultural variations, and the individual differences in relation to cultural variations. To make a case for broadening this scope, we characterize relevant cross-cultural research, sample classic cognitive research that is congruent with such an approach, and discuss compatibility between a cross-cultural perspective and the classic tenets of cognitive psychology. We make recommendations for large and small steps for the field to incorporate greater cultural representation in the study of cognition, while recognizing the challenges associated with these efforts and acknowledging that not every research question calls for a cross-cultural perspective.
In recent years, the study of the conceptualization of time has seen a considerable growth, providing a basis for exploring the cognitive foundation of metaphor. But if metaphorical representations of time are established in the cognitive system, how are they manipulated when humans are engaged in creative expression? This is the question that the present volume addresses, on the assumption that by interrogating creativity, new insights into our understanding of time may be gained. Our view of creativity, which informs the ten chapters that compose this volume, endorses not only the extraordinary instances found in poetry and the arts (cinema, music, graphic novels, etc.), but also its more ‘mundane’, everyday manifestations that appear in ordinary language use, political discourse, or TV news. Spanning across modalities (verbal, pictorial, auditory, and gestural), the exemplary expressions herein are intended to reflect the richness and diversity vis-à-vis the creativity of time representations while also pointing to the common underpinnings that motivate and constrain creativity.
Temporal focus is the attention individuals devote to thinking about the past, present, and future. The goal of this study was to validate the Temporal Focus Scale for Argentina and analyze its psychometric properties. Two studies were carried out. Firstly, the factor structure, internal consistency, reliability, and external validity were tested (n=190). To assess external validity, the ZTPI, the self-control scale and the psychological distress scale K-10 were used. Among the main results, the parallel analysis suggested the structure of three factors that explained 72% of the total variance (KMO=.80; χ 2 (66)=1261.7; p<.001) and the semi-confirmatory factor analysis yielded measures proper setting (CFI=.97, RMSEA=.05). Reliability was tested using McDonald's omega and Cronbach's alpha coefficients (values from .81 to .89). The correlations showed that past focus is related to ZTPI negative past and K-10 (r=.58 and .46; p<.01); present focus with ZTPI fatalistic present, K-10 and self-control (r =-. 20,-.23 and .22; p<.01); and future focus with K-10 and ZTPI future (r = .21 and .22; p<.01). In the second study (n=660) a confirmatory factor analysis was performed with the three-factor structure, although there were problems with item 10. After removing item 10, the model with eleven items showed an acceptable fit (χ 2 /gl =4.27, CFI=.95, GFI=.95, NNFI=.94, RMSEA=.07). The internal consistency coefficients were higher than 0.76. In conclusion, this study provides an acceptable Argentinian version of the Temporal Focus Scale.
There is a distinction between languages that use the duration is length metaphor, like English (e.g., long time ), and languages like Spanish that conceptualise time using the duration is quantity metaphor (e.g., much time ). The present study examines the use of both metaphors, exploring their multimodal behaviour in Spanish speakers. We analyse co-speech gesture patterns in the TV news setting, using data from the NewsScape Library, that co-occur with expressions that trigger the duration is quantity construal (e.g., durante todo ‘during the whole’) and the duration is length construal in the from X to Y construction (e.g., desde el principio hasta el final ‘from beginning to end’). Results show that both metaphors tend to co-occur with a semantic gesture, with a preference for the lateral axis, as reported in previous studies. However, our data also indicate that the direction of the gesture changes depending on the construal. The duration is quantity metaphor tends to be performed with gestures with an outwards direction, in contrast with the duration is length construal, which employ a left-to-right directionality. These differences in gesture realisation point to the existence of different construals for the concept of temporal duration.
The temporal-focus hypothesis (TFH) states that people’s mental conceptualization of past or future as in front is determined by their cultural attitudes towards time. Whereas previous studies have found that personally and contextually-relevant factors (e.g. studying and visiting experience) can cause people’s attentional focus to shift, and their implicit space–time mappings to change accordingly, the current study instead shows that Chinese participants adhered to a future-in-front mapping and maintained a future-focus irrespective of experimentally-induced or naturally-occurring contextual stimuli and that temporal focus was not a reliable predictor of temporal representation. These findings call into question the generalizability of the TFH and the inherent reliability of its assessment instruments, thus arguing that further replication studies need to be conducted before concluding that implicit space–time mappings are a function of cultural attitudes towards time.
In the present study, the Arabic metaphorical expressions associated with the conceptual metaphors TIME IS SPACE and THE FUTURE IS BEHIND were analyzed. The analyzed tokens were searched for online. In addition, native speakers of Hijazi-Saudi Arabic confirmed the natural usage of the tokens in their dialect. The productivity of placing the FUTURE in front of the EGO and the unproductivity of placing it behind indicates the FUTURE in front of the EGO as the norm. Based on the metaphorical elements found in the tokens considered, a bidimensional conceptual location of objects on the JOURNEY OF TIME was proposed to include the front location or the elsewhere location. The elsewhere location was referred to as behind, extending the meaning of ‘behind’ to include all locations that are not front. This bidimensionality is represented by the conceptual metaphors FOCUS IS FRONT and PERIPHERY IS BEHIND. Examples associated with these conceptual metaphors were associated with the experiential embodiment. In previous research, the direction of writing and how much weight is given to cultural values have claimed to influence the placement of the FUTURE in Arabic as pre-set reasons. This study is significant because it is done without pre-set reasons for metaphor usage, resulting in none-steered findings. Also, this study opens a window to the metaphorical system of the Hijazi-Saudi Arabic, a variety of Arabic whose metaphorical system is understudied. This study invites considering the placement of the FUTURE in other languages and cultures.
The abstract concept of time is mentally represented as a spatially oriented line, with the past associated with the left space and the future associated with the right. Although the line is supposed to be continuous, most available evidence is also consistent with a categorical representation that only discriminates between past and future. The aim of the present study was to test the continuous or categorical nature of the mental timeline. Italian participants judged the temporal reference of 20 temporal expressions by pressing keys on either the left or the right. In Experiment 1 (N = 32), all words were presented at the center of the screen. In Experiment 2 (N = 32), each word was presented on the screen in a central, left, or right position. In Experiment 3 (N = 32), all text was mirror-reversed. In all experiments, participants were asked to place the 20 temporal expressions on a 10-cm line. The results showed a clear Spatial–TEmporal Association of Response Codes (STEARC) effect which did not vary in strength depending on the location of the temporal expressions on the line. However, there was also a clear Distance effect: latencies were slower for words that were closer to the present than further away. We conclude that the mental timeline is a continuous representation that can be used in a categorical way when an explicit past vs. future discrimination is required by the task.
Much prior research has investigated how humans understand time using body-based contrasts like front/back and left/right. It has recently come to light, however, that some communities instead understand time using environment-based contrasts. Here, we present the richest portrait yet of one such case: the topographic system used by the Yupno of Papua New Guinea, in which the past is construed as downhill and the future as uphill. We first survey topographic concepts in Yupno language and culture, showing how they constitute a privileged resource for communicating about space. Next, we survey time concepts in Yupno, focusing on how topographic concepts are used to construe past, present, and future. We then illustrate how this topographic understanding of time comes to life in the words, hands, and minds of Yupno speakers. Drawing on informal interviews, we offer a view of the topographic system that goes beyond a community-level summary, and offers a glimpse of its individual-level and moment-to-moment texture. Finally, we step back to account for how this topographic understanding of time is embedded within a rich cognitive ecology of linguistic, cultural, gestural, and architectural practices. We close by discussing an elusive question: Why is the future uphill?
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 (be-sides 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.
Do we conceptualise the future as being behind us or in front of us? While this question has traditionally been investigated through the lens of spatiotemporal metaphors, new impetus was recently provided by the Temporal-Focus Hypothesis (de la Fuente et al., 2014, Psych Sci). This hypothesis holds that the mapping of temporal concepts onto the front-back axis is determined by an individual’s temporal focus, which varies as a function of culture, age, and short-term attention shifts. Here, we instead show that participants map the future on to a frontal position, regardless of cultural background and short-term shifts. However, one factor that does influence temporal mappings is age, such that older participants are more likely to map the future as behind than younger participants. These findings suggest that aging may be a major determinant of space-time mappings, and that additional data need to be collected before concluding that culture or short-term attention do influence space-time mappings.
The coefficient of determination R² quantifies the proportion of variance explained by a statistical model and is an important summary statistic of biological interest. However, estimating R² for generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) remains challenging. We have previously introduced a version of R² that we called for Poisson and binomial GLMMs, but not for other distributional families. Similarly, we earlier discussed how to estimate intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) using Poisson and binomial GLMMs. In this paper, we generalize our methods to all other non-Gaussian distributions, in particular to negative binomial and gamma distributions that are commonly used for modelling biological data. While expanding our approach, we highlight two useful concepts for biologists, Jensen's inequality and the delta method, both of which help us in understanding the properties of GLMMs. Jensen's inequality has important implications for biologically meaningful interpretation of GLMMs, whereas the delta method allows a general derivation of variance associated with non-Gaussian distributions. We also discuss some special considerations for binomial GLMMs with binary or proportion data. We illustrate the implementation of our extension by worked examples from the field of ecology and evolution in the R environment. However, our method can be used across disciplines and regardless of statistical environments.
This paper aims to introduce multilevel logistic regression analysis in a simple and practical way. First, we introduce the basic principles of logistic regression analysis (conditional probability, logit transformation, odds ratio). Second, we discuss the two fundamental implications of running this kind of analysis with a nested data structure: In multilevel logistic regression, the odds that the outcome variable equals one (rather than zero) may vary from one cluster to another (i.e. the intercept may vary) and the effect of a lower-level variable may also vary from one cluster to another (i.e. the slope may vary). Third and finally, we provide a simplified three-step “turnkey” procedure for multilevel logistic regression modeling:
• Preliminary phase: Cluster- or grand-mean centering variables
• Step #1: Running an empty model and calculating the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC)
• Step #2: Running a constrained and an augmented intermediate model and performing a likelihood ratio test to determine whether considering the cluster-based variation of the effect of the lower-level variable improves the model fit
• Step #3 Running a final model and interpreting the odds ratio and confidence intervals to determine whether data support your hypothesis
Command syntax for Stata, R, Mplus, and SPSS are included. These steps will be applied to a study on Justin Bieber, because everybody likes Justin Bieber.
It is widely assumed that there is a natural, prelinguistic conceptual domain of time whose linguistic organization is universally structured via metaphoric mapping from the lexicon and grammar of space and motion. We challenge this assumption on the basis of our research on the Amondawa (Tupi Kawahib) language and culture of Amazonia. Using both observational data and structured field linguistic tasks, we show that linguistic space-time mapping at the constructional level is not a feature of the Amondawa language, and is not employed by Amondawa speakers (when speaking Amondawa). Amondawa does not recruit its extensive inventory of terms and constructions for spatial motion and location to express temporal relations. Amondawa also lacks a numerically based calendric system. To account for these data, and in opposition to a Universal Space-Time Mapping Hypothesis, we propose a Mediated Mapping Hypothesis, which accords causal importance to the numerical and artefact-based construction of time-based (as opposed to event-based) time interval systems.
In Arabic, as in many languages, the future is "ahead" and the past is "behind." Yet in the research reported here, we showed that Arabic speakers tend to conceptualize the future as behind and the past as ahead of them, despite using spoken metaphors that suggest the opposite. We propose a new account of how space-time mappings become activated in individuals' minds and entrenched in their cultures, the temporal-focus hypothesis: People should conceptualize either the future or the past as in front of them to the extent that their culture (or subculture) is future oriented or past oriented. Results support the temporal-focus hypothesis, demonstrating that the space-time mappings in people's minds are conditioned by their cultural attitudes toward time, that they depend on attentional focus, and that they can vary independently of the space-time mappings enshrined in language.
Maximum likelihood or restricted maximum likelihood (REML) estimates of the
parameters in linear mixed-effects models can be determined using the lmer
function in the lme4 package for R. As for most model-fitting functions in R,
the model is described in an lmer call by a formula, in this case including
both fixed- and random-effects terms. The formula and data together determine a
numerical representation of the model from which the profiled deviance or the
profiled REML criterion can be evaluated as a function of some of the model
parameters. The appropriate criterion is optimized, using one of the
constrained optimization functions in R, to provide the parameter estimates. We
describe the structure of the model, the steps in evaluating the profiled
deviance or REML criterion, and the structure of classes or types that
represents such a model. Sufficient detail is included to allow specialization
of these structures by users who wish to write functions to fit specialized
linear mixed models, such as models incorporating pedigrees or smoothing
splines, that are not easily expressible in the formula language used by lmer.
This paper studies the metaphorical time orientation in Chinese along its horizontal and vertical axes. It will focus, however, on the controversy over its horizontal axis, readdressing the issue regarding whether the Chinese ego faces toward the future or past in metaphorical orientation of time. It is interesting to note that there exist three different views on this issue. To reinforce the view that future is in front of ego and past is behind ego in Chinese, the paper argues that in analyzing data it is important to make two crucial distinctions. The first distinction, extensively discussed in the literature, is between Ego-Reference-Point (Ego-RP) and Time-Reference-Point (Time-RP). The second related distinction, which has been largely ignored, is between Time-Referent (Time-R) and Human-Referent (Human-R). The study shows that once these two distinctions are made, the seemingly contradictory linguistic data will fall into places that form a coherent metaphorical system. The purpose of making these distinctions is to avoid confusion between past and future on the one hand and anteriority and posteriority on the other. It is hoped that this study contributes to the recent efforts to build a comprehensive framework of temporal reference frames applicable to the study of spatial construal of time in languages and cultures in general.
Abstract
The metaphor TIME AS SPACE across languages
Günter Radden, Hamburg
We mainly understand time metonymically in terms of events and metaphorically in terms of space. This paper is concerned with the structure of the metaphor TIME AS SPACE. The domains of space and time differ in some important respects but also share a number of structural topologies: First, space is three-dimensional, whereas we generally think of time as a one-dimensional line. Second, both the spatial and temporal worlds have static and dynamic situations, i.e., movements. Third, space and time can both be conceived of subjectively and objectively, i.e., with or without the conceptualizer's being on stage.
The structure we associate with time is culturally constructed. Since there are different possibilities of arranging elements in space, we also find different metaphorical models of time, each of which is characterized by its own internal logic. The following structural elements of space allow for conceptual variability in our metaphorical understanding of time:
(i) The orientation of the time-line: The Western view of time takes a front-back orientation, while Chinese also applies the vertical axis in conceptualizing time. In English, an up-down conceptualization of time is also found in expressions such as Our family records reach down to 1707.
(ii) The form of the time-line: Only the "good" geometrical gestalts of a straight line and a full or partial circle are used as spatial metaphors of time. The circle is an appropriate form for representing recurrent, cyclic time as in Our shop is open round the clock.
(iii) The position of time units on the time-line: In conceptualizing time on a horizontal axis, we chiefly think of the future as lying in front and the past as lying behind. In a number of languages, the future is, however, seen as lying behind and the past as lying in front, often combined with a circular model of time.
(iv) The sequencing of time units relative to each other: Both in spatial and temporal sequencing, the observer may adopt two kinds of perspective: the face-to-face or in-tandem perspective. Western cultures take the former perspective as in the day after tomorrow, while Hausa is a language that takes the in-tandem perspective.
Our predominant folk model of time is that of "flowing time": Time flows from the future to the past, as in passing years. In its variant form, the observer moves over stationary time. This model is consistent with the direction of time evolving from the past to the future, but it is inconsistent with the time-flow model.
Research in cognitive linguistics and in processing of temporal metaphors has traditionally distinguished between Moving-Ego and Moving-Time mappings: Either the Ego is construed as moving regarding fixed temporal landmarks or Time is construed as moving regarding the Ego. Both of these metaphors involve time events in reference to an Ego, which specifies the present time Now.We build on recent theoretical suggestions for a more fundamental classification of temporal metaphors: Ego- and Time-Reference-Point metaphors (Ego-RP and Time-RP). The distinction focuses on the role of reference points in ascribing orientation, rather than on the identity of a moving entity (Ego or Time). Using visual priming experiments we provide evidence of the psychological reality of the Time-RP metaphor, a temporal metaphor with no reference to an Ego.
Do people who speak different languages think differently, even when they are not using language? To find out, we used nonlinguistic psychophysical tasks to compare mental representations of musical pitch in native speakers of Dutch and Farsi. Dutch speakers describe pitches as high (hoog) or low (laag), whereas Farsi speakers describe pitches as thin (na-zok) or thick (koloft). Differences in language were reflected in differences in performance on two pitch-reproduction tasks, even though the tasks used simple, nonlinguistic stimuli and responses. To test whether experience using language influences mental representations of pitch, we trained native Dutch speakers to describe pitch in terms of thickness, as Farsi speakers do. After the training, Dutch speakers' performance on a nonlinguistic psychophysical task resembled the performance of native Farsi speakers. People who use different linguistic space-pitch metaphors also think about pitch differently. Language can play a causal role in shaping nonlinguistic representations of musical pitch.
Nine experiments of timed odd–even judgments examined how parity and number magnitude are accessed from Arabic and verbal numerals. With Arabic numerals, Ss used the rightmost digit to access a store of semantic number knowledge. Verbal numerals went through an additional stage of transcoding to base 10. Magnitude information was automatically accessed from Arabic numerals. Large numbers preferentially elicited a rightward response, and small numbers a leftward response. The Spatial–Numerical Association of Response Codes effect depended only on relative number magnitude and was weaker or absent with letters or verbal numerals. Direction did not vary with handedness or hemispheric dominance but was linked to the direction of writing, as it faded or even reversed in right-to-left writing Iranian Ss. The results supported a modular architecture for number processing, with distinct but interconnected Arabic, verbal, and magnitude representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In numerous languages, space provides a productive domain for the expression of time. This paper examines how time-to-space mapping is realized in Yucatec Maya. At the linguistic level, Yucatec Maya has numerous resources to express deictic time, whereas expression of sequential time is highly constrained. Specifically, in gesture, we do not find any metaphorical oriented timeline, but only an opposition between “current time” (mapped on the “here” space) and “remote time” (mapped on the “remote/distant space”). Additionally, past and future are not contrasted. Sequential or deictic time in language and gesture are not conceived as unfolding along a metaphorical oriented line (e.g., left-right or front-back) but as a succession of completed events not spatially organized. Interestingly, although Yucatec Maya speakers preferentially use a geocentric spatial frame of reference (FoR), especially visible in their use of gesture, time is not mapped onto a geocentric axis (e.g., east-west). We argue that, instead of providing a source for time mapping, the use of a spatial geocentric FoR in Yucatec Maya seems to inhibit it. The Yucatec Maya expression of time in language and gesture fits the more general cultural conception of time as cyclic. Experimental results confirmed, to some extent, this non-linear, non-directional conception of time in Yucatec Maya.
Modernization theorists from Karl Marx to Daniel Bell have argued that economic development brings pervasive cultural changes. But others, from Max Weber to Samuel Huntington, have claimed that cultural values are an enduring and autonomous influence on society. We test the thesis that economic development is linked with systematic changes in basic values. Using data from the three waves of the World Values Surveys, which include 65 societies and 75 percent of the world's population, we find evidence of both massive cultural change and the persistence of distinctive cultural traditions. Economic development is associated with shifts away from absolute norms and values toward values that are increasingly rational, tolerant, trusting, and participatory. Cultural change, however, is path dependent. The broad cultural heritage of a society-Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Confucian, or Communist-leaves an imprint on values that endures despite modernization. Moreover, the differences between the values held by members of different religions within given societies are much smaller than are cross-national differences. Once established, such cross-cultural differences become part of a national culture transmitted by educational institutions and mass media. We conclude with some proposed revisions of modernization theory.
What determines which spatial axis people use to represent time? We investigate effects of writing direction. English, like Mandarin Chinese in mainland China, is written left to right and then top to bottom. But in Taiwan, characters are written predominantly top to bottom and then right to left. Because being a fluent reader–writer entails thousands of hours of experience with eye and hand movement in the direction dictated by one’s writing system, it could be that writing system direction affects the axis used to represent time in terms of space. In a behavioral experiment, we had native speakers of English, Mandarin Chinese from mainland China, and Mandarin Chinese from Taiwan place sets of cards in temporal order. These cards depicted stages of development of plants and animals, for instance: tadpole, froglet, frog. Results showed that English speakers always represented time as moving from left to right (LR). Mainland Chinese participants trended in the same direction, but a small portion laid the cards out from top to bottom. Taiwanese participants were just as likely to depict time as moving from LR as from top to bottom, with a large minority depicting it as moving from right to left. Native writing system affects how people represent time spatially.
Nine experiments of timed odd-even judgments examined how parity and number magnitude are accessed from Arabic and verbal numerals. With Arabic numerals, Ss used the rightmost digit to access a store of semantic number knowledge. Verbal numerals went through an additional stage of transcoding to base 10. Magnitude information was automatically accessed from Arabic numerals. Large numbers preferentially elicited a rightward response, and small numbers a leftward response. The Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect depended only on relative number magnitude and was weaker or absent with letters or verbal numerals. Direction did not vary with handedness or hemispheric dominance but was linked to the direction of writing, as it faded or even reversed in right-to-left writing Iranian Ss. The results supported a modular architecture for number processing, with distinct but interconnected Arabic, verbal, and magnitude representations.
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.
Social cognition is the scientific study of the cognitive events underlying social thought and attitudes. Currently, the field's prevailing theoretical perspectives are the traditional schema view and embodied cognition theories. Despite important differences, these perspectives share the seemingly uncontroversial notion that people interpret and evaluate a given social stimulus using knowledge about similar stimuli. However, research in cognitive linguistics (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) suggests that people construe the world in large part through conceptual metaphors, which enable them to understand abstract concepts using knowledge of superficially dissimilar, typically more concrete concepts. Drawing on these perspectives, we propose that social cognition can and should be enriched by an explicit recognition that conceptual metaphor is a unique cognitive mechanism that shapes social thought and attitudes. To advance this metaphor-enriched perspective, we introduce the metaphoric transfer strategy as a means of empirically assessing whether metaphors influence social information processing in ways that are distinct from the operation of schemas alone. We then distinguish conceptual metaphor from embodied simulation—the mechanism posited by embodied cognition theories—and introduce the alternate source strategy as a means of empirically teasing apart these mechanisms. Throughout, we buttress our claims with empirical evidence of the influence of metaphors on a wide range of social psychological phenomena. We outline directions for future research on the strength and direction of metaphor use in social information processing. Finally, we mention specific benefits of a metaphor-enriched perspective for integrating and generating social cognitive research and for bridging social cognition with neighboring fields.
A large body of research documents cognitive differences between Westerners and East Asians. Westerners tend to be more analytic and East Asians tend to be more holistic. These findings have often been explained as being due to corresponding differences in social orientation. Westerners are more independent and Easterners are more interdependent. However, comparisons of the cognitive tendencies of Westerners and East Asians do not allow us to rule out alternative explanations for the cognitive differences, such as linguistic and genetic differences, as well as cultural differences other than social orientation. In this review we summarize recent developments which provide stronger support for the social orientation hypothesis.
Spanish and English speakers tend to conceptualize time as running from left to right along a mental line. Previous research suggests that this representational strategy arises from the participants’ exposure to a left-to-right writing system. However, direct evidence supporting this assertion suffers from several limitations and relies only on the visual modality. This study subjected to a direct test the reading hypothesis using an auditory task. Participants from two groups (Spanish and Hebrew) differing in the directionality of their orthographic system had to discriminate temporal reference (past or future) of verbs and adverbs (referring to either past or future) auditorily presented to either the left or right ear by pressing a left or a right key. Spanish participants were faster responding to past words with the left hand and to future words with the right hand, whereas Hebrew participants showed the opposite pattern. Our results demonstrate that the left-right mapping of time is not restricted to the visual modality and that the direction of reading accounts for the preferred directionality of the mental time line. These results are discussed in the context of a possible mechanism underlying the effects of reading direction on highly abstract conceptual representations.
Since the proposal of conceptual metaphors as the representational means for grounding abstract concepts in concrete sensorio-motor experiences, experimental research about this issue is on the rise. The present paper identifies the problem of flexibility as one of the key questions that remains to receive a satisfactory answer, and proposes a psychologically plausible model that offers such an answer. The model is grounded on basic spatial cognition principles, working memory representations and attentional processes. This framework integrates prior results and licenses several new predictions. Direct test of some of these predictions is provided by two recent studies from our lab. Finally, we discuss the implications of this framework for the issues of the manifestation of conceptual metaphors in behaviour, the acquisition of conceptual metaphors, their cross-cultural variation, and the Symbol Grounding Problem.
The present study investigates deliberate and spontaneous temporal gestures in Mandarin speakers. The results of our analysis show that when asked to gesture about past and future events deliberately (Study 1), Mandarin speakers tend to mimic space-time mappings in their spoken metaphors or graphic conventions for time in Chinese culture, including sagittal mappings (front/past, back/future), vertical mappings (up/past, down/future), and lateral mappings (left/past, right/future). However, in their spontaneous co-speech gestures about time (Study 2), more congruent gestures were produced on the lateral axis than on the vertical axis. This suggests that although Mandarin speakers could think about time vertically, they still showed a horizontal bias in their conceptions of time. Speakers were also more likely to gesture according to future-in-front mappings despite more past-in-front mappings found in spoken Chinese, suggesting a dissociation of temporal language and temporal thought. These results demonstrate that gesture is useful for revealing the spatial conceptualization of time.
What determines how people implicitly associate the “past” and “future” with “front” and “back”? According to the Temporal Focus Hypothesis (TFH), people's cultural attitudes toward time influence their implicit space-time mappings. However, previous research mainly used cross-cultural comparison in which the cultures compared differ not only in attentional focus on temporal events, but may also in other cultural values. Thus, the specific role of cultural attitudes toward time has not been tested. In the current study, we compared Southern and Northern Vietnamese who have many aspects in common but demonstrate cultural differences in attitudes toward the past and future. The results showed that the two groups of participants tended to think about time according to their temporal focus. Taken together, this pattern of results showed that within-cultural differences in temporal focus can also predict variation in space-time mappings, which provided further supporting evidence for the TFH.
The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"--metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them.
In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.
What influences how people implicitly associate "past" and "future" with "front" and "back?" Whereas previous research has shown that cultural attitudes toward time play a role in modulating space-time mappings in people's mental models (de la Fuente, Santiago, Román, Dumitrache & Casasanto, 2014), we investigated real life experiences as potential additional influences on these implicit associations. Participants within the same single culture, who are engaged in different intermediate-term educational experiences (Study 1), long-term living experiences (Study 2), and short-term visiting experiences (Study 3), showed their distinct differences in temporal focus, thereby influencing their implicit spatializations of time. Results across samples suggest that personal attitudes toward time related to real life experiences may influence people's space-time mappings. The findings we report on shed further light on the high flexibility of human conceptualization system. While culture may exert an important influence on temporal focus, a person's conceptualization of time may be attributed to a culmination of factors.
People use space in a variety of ways to structure their thoughts about time. The present report focuses on the different ways that space is employed when reasoning about deictic (past/future relationships) and sequence (earlier/later relationships) time. In the first study, we show that deictic and sequence time are aligned along the lateral axis in a manner consistent with previous work, with past and earlier events associated with left space and future and later events associated with right space. However, the alignment of time with space is different along the sagittal axis. Participants associated future events and earlier events-not later events-with the space in front of their body and past and later events with the space behind, consistent with the sagittal spatial terms (e.g., ahead, in front of) that we use to talk about deictic and sequence time. In the second study, we show that these associations between sequence time and sagittal space are sensitive to person-perspective. This suggests that the particular space-time associations observed in English speakers are influenced by a variety of different spatial properties, including spatial location and perspective.
Vietnamese speakers can describe the future as behind them and gesture forwards to indicate the past, which suggests they use a conceptual model of Time in which the future is behind and the past is in front. This type of model has previously been shown to be pervasive only among older speakers of Aymara in the Andes (Núñez and Sweetser 2006. With the future behind them: Convergent evidence from Aymara language and gesture in the crosslinguistic comparison of spatial construals of time. Cognitive Science 30. 401-450). Whereas Time in the Aymara model does not "move", the present data show that Time in Vietnamese can "approach" from behind the Ego and "continue forward" into the past. To our knowledge, no other language has been identified with a model where Time moves from behind Ego to in front. Recognition of this model in Vietnamese will open up new research opportunities, particularly since the model does not seem to be endangered in Vietnamese.
Metaphor has been a central topic within cognitive linguistics since the field was born and the term coined in the 1970s. This is partly a historical consequence of George Lakoff's dominant role and major contributions-metaphor was his focus at the time he and a number of colleagues were defining the field of cognitive linguistics, and continues to be today. Since the 1950s, Chomskyan linguists have been devising theories of syntax which largely exclude references to the meanings of linguistic structures; it is nearly impossible, though, to conceive of metaphor without taking into account the connections between lexical semantics, usage, and our understanding and perceptions of the world. This article discusses the basics of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), including mapping, systematicity, asymmetrical directionality, and experiential motivation. It also considers primary metaphors and neural CMT, the cognitive reality of conceptual metaphors, conceptual integration (or "blending"), computational models of metaphor, and the link between metaphor and culture.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson take on the daunting task of rebuilding Western philosophy in alignment with three fundamental lessons from cognitive science: The mind is inherently embodied, thought is mostly unconscious, and abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. Why so daunting? "Cognitive science--the empirical study of the mind--calls upon us to create a new, empirically responsible philosophy, a philosophy consistent with empirical discoveries about the nature of mind," they write. "A serious appreciation of cognitive science requires us to rethink philosophy from the beginning, in a way that would put it more in touch with the reality of how we think." In other words, no Platonic forms, no Cartesian mind-body duality, no Kantian pure logic. Even Noam Chomsky's generative linguistics is revealed under scrutiny to have substantial problems.
Parts of Philosophy in the Flesh retrace the ground covered in the authors' earlier Metaphors We Live By , which revealed how we deal with abstract concepts through metaphor. (The previous sentence, for example, relies on the metaphors "Knowledge is a place" and "Knowing is seeing" to make its point.) Here they reveal the metaphorical underpinnings of basic philosophical concepts like time, causality--even morality--demonstrating how these metaphors are rooted in our embodied experiences. They repropose philosophy as an attempt to perfect such conceptual metaphors so that we can understand how our thought processes shape our experience; they even make a tentative effort toward rescuing spirituality from the heavy blows dealt by the disproving of the disembodied mind or "soul" by reimagining "transcendence" as "imaginative empathetic projection." Their source list is helpfully arranged by subject matter, making it easier to follow up on their citations. If you enjoyed the mental workout from Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works , Lakoff and Johnson will, to pursue the "Learning is exercise" metaphor, take you to the next level of training. --Ron Hogan Two leading thinkers offer a blueprint for a new philosophy.
"Their ambition is massive, their argument important.…The authors engage in a sort of metaphorical genome project, attempting to delineate the genetic code of human thought." -The New York Times Book Review
"This book will be an instant academic best-seller." -Mark Turner, University of Maryland
This is philosophy as it has never been seen before. Lakoff and Johnson show that a philosophy responsible to the science of the mind offers a radically new and detailed understandings of what a person is. After first describing the philosophical stance that must follow from taking cognitive science seriously, they re-examine the basic concepts of the mind, time, causation, morality, and the self; then they rethink a host of philosophical traditions, from the classical Greeks through Kantian morality through modern analytical philosophy.
How does space come to be used to represent nonspatial relations, as in graphs? Approximately 1200 children and adults from three language cultures, English, Hebrew, and Arabic, produced graphic representations of spatial, temporal, quantitative, and preference relations. Children placed stickers on square pieces of paper to represent, for example, a disliked food, a liked food, and a favorite food. Two major analyses of these data were performed. The analysis of directionality of the represented relation showed effects of direction of written language only for representations of temporal concepts, where left-to-right was dominant for speakers of English and right-to-left for speakers of Arabic, with Hebrew speakers in between. For quantity and preference, all canonical directions except top-to-bottom were used approximately equally by all cultures and ages. The analysis of information represented in the graphic representations showed an age trend; more of the older children represented ordinal and some interval information in their mappings. There was a small effect of abstractness of concept on information represented, with more interval information represented by children for the more concrete concepts, space, time, quantity, and preference in that order. Directionality findings were related to language-specific left-to-right or right-to-left directionality and to universal association of more or better with upward. The difficulties in externally representing interval information were related to prevalent difficulties in expressing comparative information. Children's graphic productions were compared to other invented notation systems, by children and by cultures, particularly for numbers and language.
The role of religion in the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina has been both obvious and invisible. It was obvious in that both perpetrators
and victims of organized atrocities were identified by their religious tradition. It was invisible in that the religious manifestations
were viewed either as incidental or as masks for deeper social, political, and economic issues; or else categorized exclusively
as aspects of ethnicity.
This essay examines the role of religion in the ideology of those carrying out ”ethnic cleansing,“ as manifested in the literature
of the religious nationalists and, particularly in the case of Catholic religious nationalism, in the language of destruction
and construction of shrines. Juxtaposed to the shrine texts of religious nationalism is a vision of shrine preservation and
reconstruction. The reconstruction efforts are viewed by their advocates as central to the construction of a pluriform Bosnia-Hercegovina
in which all religions historically integral to Bosnian civilization will be viewed as equal and equally important elements
of the national identity. By examining the struggle between these two visions of sacral monuments, we can better understand
and evaluate the agency of religious institutions, leaders, and symbols in the Bosnian drama.
Everyday concepts of duration, of sequence, and of past, present, and future are fundamental to how humans make sense of experience. In culture after culture, converging evidence from language, co-speech gesture, and behavioral tasks suggests that humans handle these elusive yet indispensable notions by construing them spatially. Where do these spatial construals come from and why do they take the particular, sometimes peculiar, spatial forms that they do? As researchers across the cognitive sciences pursue these questions on different levels - cultural, developmental - in diverse populations and with new methodologies, clear answers will depend upon a shared and nuanced set of theoretical distinctions. Time is not a monolith, but rather a mosaic of construals with distinct properties and origins.
The use of both linear and generalized linear mixed‐effects models ( LMM s and GLMM s) has become popular not only in social and medical sciences, but also in biological sciences, especially in the field of ecology and evolution. Information criteria, such as Akaike Information Criterion ( AIC ), are usually presented as model comparison tools for mixed‐effects models.
The presentation of ‘variance explained’ ( R ² ) as a relevant summarizing statistic of mixed‐effects models, however, is rare, even though R ² is routinely reported for linear models ( LM s) and also generalized linear models ( GLM s). R ² has the extremely useful property of providing an absolute value for the goodness‐of‐fit of a model, which cannot be given by the information criteria. As a summary statistic that describes the amount of variance explained, R ² can also be a quantity of biological interest.
One reason for the under‐appreciation of R ² for mixed‐effects models lies in the fact that R ² can be defined in a number of ways. Furthermore, most definitions of R ² for mixed‐effects have theoretical problems (e.g. decreased or negative R ² values in larger models) and/or their use is hindered by practical difficulties (e.g. implementation).
Here, we make a case for the importance of reporting R ² for mixed‐effects models. We first provide the common definitions of R ² for LM s and GLM s and discuss the key problems associated with calculating R ² for mixed‐effects models. We then recommend a general and simple method for calculating two types of R ² (marginal and conditional R ² ) for both LMM s and GLMM s, which are less susceptible to common problems.
This method is illustrated by examples and can be widely employed by researchers in any fields of research, regardless of software packages used for fitting mixed‐effects models. The proposed method has the potential to facilitate the presentation of R ² for a wide range of circumstances.
Most research on metaphors that construe time as motion (motion meta-phors of time) has focused on the question of whether it is the times or the person experiencing them (ego) that moves. This paper focuses on the equally important distinction between metaphors that locate times relative to ego (the ego-based metaphors Moving Ego and Moving Time) and a metaphor that locates times relative to other times (SEQUENCE IS RELATIVE POSITION ON A PATH). Rather than a single abstract target domain TIME, these two kinds of temporal metaphor metaphorize di¤erent kinds of tem-poral concept—perspective-specific vs. perspective-neutral temporal con-cepts. Recognition of this distinction enhances the explanatory potential of conceptual metaphor theory (Lako¤ and Johnson 1980). An example in-volves the interaction of deixis and the temporal reference crosslinguisti-cally of vocabulary with the spatial meanings IN-FRONT and BEHIND. More generally, this approach refines our ability to describe the temporal con-cepts involved in motion metaphors of time. Such temporal concepts are present not only in the target domains, but also in the source domains of motion metaphors of time, where we find space-to-time metonymy, which may play a role in motivating the metaphors. In order to distinguish such metonymy from metaphor, we need to characterize metaphor as a mapping across frames rather than domains.
Time, an everyday yet fundamentally abstract domain, is conceptualized in terms of space throughout the world's cultures. Linguists and psychologists have presented evidence of a widespread pattern in which deictic time-past, present, and future-is construed along the front/back axis, a construal that is linear and ego-based. To investigate the universality of this pattern, we studied the construal of deictic time among the Yupno, an indigenous group from the mountains of Papua New Guinea, whose language makes extensive use of allocentric topographic (uphill/downhill) terms for describing spatial relations. We measured the pointing direction of Yupno speakers' gestures-produced naturally and without prompting-as they explained common expressions related to the past, present, and future. Results show that the Yupno spontaneously construe deictic time spatially in terms of allocentric topography: the past is construed as downhill, the present as co-located with the speaker, and the future as uphill. Moreover, the Yupno construal is not linear, but exhibits a particular geometry that appears to reflect the local terrain. The findings shed light on how, our universal human embodiment notwithstanding, linguistic, cultural, and environmental pressures come to shape abstract concepts.
Conceptual congruency effects are biases induced by an irrelevant conceptual dimension of a task (e.g., location in vertical space) on the processing of another, relevant dimension (e.g., judging words' emotional evaluation). Such effects are a central empirical pillar for recent views about how the mind/brain represents concepts. In the present paper, we show how attentional cueing (both exogenous and endogenous) to each conceptual dimension succeeds in modifying both the manifestation and the symmetry of the effect. The theoretical implications of this finding are discussed.
Thirty years ago, grounded cognition had roots in philosophy, perception, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, and cognitive neuropsychology. During the next twenty years, grounded cognition continued developing in these areas, and also took new forms in robotics, cognitive ecology, cognitive neuroscience, and developmental psychology. In the past ten years, research on grounded cognition has grown rapidly, especially in cognitive neuroscience, social neuroscience, cognitive psychology, social psychology, and developmental psychology. Currently, grounded cognition appears to be achieving increased acceptance throughout cognitive science, shifting from relatively minor status to increasing importance. Nevertheless, researchers wonder whether grounded mechanisms lie at the heart of the cognitive system or are peripheral to classic symbolic mechanisms. Although grounded cognition is currently dominated by demonstration experiments in the absence of well-developed theories, the area is likely to become increasingly theory-driven over the next thirty years. Another likely development is the increased incorporation of grounding mechanisms into cognitive architectures and into accounts of classic cognitive phenomena. As this incorporation occurs, much functionality of these architectures and phenomena is likely to remain, along with many original mechanisms. Future theories of grounded cognition are likely to be heavily influenced by both cognitive neuroscience and social neuroscience, and also by developmental science and robotics. Aspects from the three major perspectives in cognitive science—classic symbolic architectures, statistical/dynamical systems, and grounded cognition—will probably be integrated increasingly in future theories, each capturing indispensable aspects of intelligence.
Cognitive research on metaphoric concepts of time has focused on differences between moving Ego and moving time models, but even more basic is the contrast between Ego- and temporal-reference-point models. Dynamic models appear to be quasi-universal cross-culturally, as does the generalization that in Ego-reference-point models, FUTURE IS IN FRONT OF EGO and PAST IS IN BACK OF EGO. The Aymara language instead has a major static model of time wherein FUTURE IS BEHIND EGO and PAST IS IN FRONT OF EGO; linguistic and gestural data give strong confirmation of this unusual culture-specific cognitive pattern. Gestural data provide crucial information unavailable to purely linguistic analysis, suggesting that when investigating conceptual systems both forms of expression should be analyzed complementarily. Important issues in embodied cognition are raised: how fully shared are bodily grounded motivations for universal cognitive patterns, what makes a rare pattern emerge, and what are the cultural entailments of such patterns?
Time is a fundamental domain of experience. In this paper we ask whether aspects of language and culture affect how people think about this domain. Specifically, we consider whether English and Mandarin speakers think about time differently. We review all of the available evidence both for and against this hypothesis, and report new data that further support and refine it. The results demonstrate that English and Mandarin speakers do think about time differently. As predicted by patterns in language, Mandarin speakers are more likely than English speakers to think about time vertically (with earlier time-points above and later time-points below).
In line with previous studies, showing that abstract concepts like "power" or "god" implicitly activate spatial associations, in the present study we hypothesized that spatial associations are coactivated during the processing of acronyms referring to names of political parties as well. In four studies, it was found that the reading of these acronyms was accompanied by the implicit activation of spatial left-right associations. That is, participants responded faster to left-wing parties by means of a left-hand button press and vice versa for right-wing parties (Experiments 1 to 3), and participants responded faster when a political acronym was presented at the side of the screen corresponding to the political orientation of the acronym (Experiment 4). Interestingly, a correlation was observed between the effect size for left-wing parties and participants' political preferences, suggesting that the reaction time effects reflect the perceived distance of a party to one's own political orientation. Together these findings indicate that spatial representations activated in response to political acronyms do not simply reflect lexical-semantic associations or spatial metaphors, but representations of parties' political orientation relative to one's own sociopolitical position.
It has long been a staple of psychological theory that early life experiences significantly shape the adult's understanding of and reactions to the social world. Here we consider how early concept development along with evolved motives operating early in life can come to exert a passive, unconscious influence on the human adult's higher-order goal pursuits, judgments, and actions. In particular, we focus on concepts and goal structures specialized for interacting with the physical environment (e.g., distance cues, temperature, cleanliness, and self-protection), which emerge early and automatically as a natural part of human development and evolution. It is proposed that via the process of scaffolding, these early sensorimotor experiences serve as the foundation for the later development of more abstract concepts and goals. Experiments using priming methodologies reveal the extent to which these early concepts serve as the analogical basis for more abstract psychological concepts, such that we come easily and naturally to speak of close relationships, warm personalities, moral purity, and psychological pain. Taken together, this research demonstrates the extent to which such foundational concepts are capable of influencing people's information processing, affective judgments, and goal pursuit, oftentimes outside of their intention or awareness.