Disentangling Spatial Metaphors for Time Using Non-spatial Responses and Auditory Stimuli

Abstract

While we often talk about time using spatial terms, experimental investigation of space-time associations has focused primarily on the space in front of the participant. This has had two consequences: the disregard of the space behind the participant (exploited in language and gesture) and the creation of potential task demands produced by spatialized manual button-presses. We introduce and test a new paradigm that uses auditory stimuli and vocal responses to address these issues. Participants made temporal judgments about deictic or sequential relationships presented auditorily along a body-centered sagittal or transversal axis. Results involving the transversal axis replicated previous work while sagittal axis results were surprising. Deictic judgments did not use the sagittal axis but sequential judgments did, in a previously undocumented way. Participants associated earlier judgments with the space in front of them and later judgments with the space behind them. These findings, using a new approach, provide evidence that different time concepts recruit space differently, mediated by meaning, stimulus modality and response mode.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank Kensy Cooperrider and Tyler Marghetis for their insightful comments on this work as well as Acacia Overoye, Lucas Medeiros de Paula, Amanda Natsuhara, and Colleen Takahashi for helping with stimulus generation and data collection.