The Theory of Cognitive Spacetime

Abstract

This article introduces the theory of cognitive spacetime. This account allows us to go beyond the space–time dichotomy that is commonly employed in psychology and cognitive science. Linguistic analysis and experimental review is provided to support the notion that what is commonly referred to as spatial cognition (or mental space) in the cognitive sciences always contains time, and that what is commonly referred to as temporal cognition (or mental time) always contains space. For “spatial cognition” the term object-spatiotemporal cognition (or object spacetime) and for “temporal cognition” the term event-spatiotemporal cognition (or event spacetime) is introduced. In order to exemplify the virtue of the new spacetime account (with its two subdomains, object spacetime and event spacetime) with a specific example, it is investigated how this new notion can substantially refine our understanding of space–time conceptual metaphor. A new conceptual-metaphor spacetime typology for cognitive processing underlying fictive motion and non-fictive motion is also proposed. Implications of the new spacetime account are discussed for metaphorically mapped mental perspective, metaphorically mapped embodiment, and cognitive science in general. Finally, specific reasons are given why the current proposal of cognitive spacetime cannot be equated with the concept of spacetime in modern physics.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author thanks Len Talmy and Steve Pinker for very valuable discussions in relation to cognitive spacetime. He also thanks an anonymous reviewer of a previous version of the manuscript and an anonymous reviewer of the current version as well as Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., for very valuable comments. Much of the research for this article was carried out while he was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.

FUNDING

The final research for this article was carried out at the University of Zurich and supported by the Cogito Foundation, Wollerau, Switzerland (R-135/12).

Notes

¹ Change of location is one of two subtypes of how we basically conceptualize motion (Talmy, 2000, pp. 35–37). Change of location is also called translational motion by Talmy. In translational motion, a physical (animate or inanimate) object undergoes a shift in location–––from one location in space to one or more other given locations. The other subtype of motion is what Talmy calls self-contained motion. In self-contained motion, an object remains at a given location and the movement of the object does not change its basic location. This typically involves movements such as rotation, oscillation, dilation, wiggling, and yet other nontranslational forms of motion. To illustrate the basic point of this section, it is enough to focus on translational motion. Translational motion is (as in Kant, 1787/2009, p. 89) called “change of location” in the present article, so that it can be contrasted directly with “change of state.”

² The generated example sentences that start here have been approved as a set by one native American English speaker.

³ This sentence reflects an instantiation of the moving-ego metaphor, whose conceptual nature is further discussed in “Cognitive Spacetime and Metaphorically Mapped Perspectival Modes.”

⁴ It is a widely used convention in conceptual metaphor theory to use an arrow (“→”) that reads mapped onto.

⁵ Adopting a widely used convention in linguistics I mark semantically or grammatically unacceptable or odd sentences with an asterisk.

⁶ Evidence that such static-dynamic sentence pairs like (6a–b) are largely equivalent in meaning can also be found in studies of coextension-path fictive motion. Norming studies report that subjects generally rate fictive-motion and non-fictive-motion sentence pairs (e.g., “The road goes through the desert” vs. “The road is in the desert”) as equal in semantic content (Matlock & Richardson, 2004). Fictive motion is examined in “Cognitive Spacetime and Metaphorically Mapped Fictive and Non-Fictive Motion.”

⁷ For further ways how the current/remote-time dichotomy can be spatially construed see the findings on the auxiliary sign language used by the aboriginal Warlpiri people in Australia (Kendon, 1993, pp. 10–11).

⁸ Note that the proposed cognition types in (10) relate to basic forms of cognitive processing: to scanning, covert attention shifts, and synopticizing. Thus, this typology does not relate to main semantic types of fictive motion, of which Talmy (1996, 2000a) has proposed thirteen: prospect path, alignment path, demonstrative path, targeting path, line of sight, radiation path, shadow path, sensory path, pattern path, frame-relative motion, advent path, access path, and coextension path. Like most studies, this study chose coextension path to examine fictive motion. It is called coextension by Talmy because in addition to the spatial extension of the static object (such as a road extension in The road goes through the desert) there often seems to be an unmentioned moving entity conceptualized which also extends over the path—such as the cognizer’s perceptual or mental gaze; cf. (10). Future research could determine if the cognitive-processing typology of (10) (scanning, covert attention shifts, synopticizing) is to some degree (which seems likely) relevant for all of Talmy’s proposed semantic fictive-motion types and their factive counterparts–––as opposed to this cognitive-processing typology being exclusively relevant for the distinction between coextension-path fictive motion and its factive counterpart.

⁹ As just noted, Mishra and Singh (2010, Experiment 2) found that physical eyes did not move along when processing fictive-motion language mentally. They used an empty-screen paradigm. It might be worthwhile to point out that Mishra and Singh did not analyze eye-gaze behavior in relation to the entire empty screen, but exclusively in relation to a relevant, just-seen area on the screen. Such an area is called a “prespecified area of interest” (AOI; Mishra and Singh, 2010, p. 149) in the eye-tracking literature. The following possibility cannot be excluded in principle: that the fictive-motion sentences did perhaps evoke relevant eye-gaze behavior on the empty screen, but outside AOI. Mishra and Singh also note that: “While listening to the spoken sentence [participants] were free to look anywhere on the blank screen” (p. 152). Still, the findings of Mishra and Singh are quite robust, since other eye-tracking experiments often do find relevant eye-gaze behavior within AOI (e.g., Altmann, 2004). Furthermore, an AOI paradigm already finds relevant eye-gaze behavior with preschool children (Martarelli & Mast, 2011) or even in long-term (after one week) pictorial recall (Martarelli & Mast, 2013). Nevertheless, I think that it would be worthwhile for future investigation to try to further confirm the “no eye-movement result” for mental fictive motion by Mishra and Singh (2010) also with an eye-tracking paradigm that involves analyzing the entire empty screen–––given that eye movements are often “very idiosyncratic” (Johansson, Holsanova, Dewhurst, & Holmqvist, 2012, p. 1312) in relation to mental images. An empty-screen paradigm that can analyze the relationship between linguistic and mentally conceptualized motion on the entire empty screen is for instance offered by Johansson et al. (2012).

¹⁰ For a systematic treatment of analog versus four-level digital (discrete, categorical, recombinable, emergent) mental representations see Stocker (2013b) and Talmy (2003).