Placing Abstract Concepts in Space: Quantity, Time and Emotional Valence.

Greg Woodin,Bodo Winter

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02169

Abstract

Research has shown that abstract concepts are often conceptualized along horizontal and vertical axes. However, there are mixed results concerning which axis is preferred for which type of conceptual domain. For instance, it has been suggested that the vertical axis may be preferred for quantity in tasks using linguistic stimuli (e.g., ‘more,’ ‘less’), whereas numerals (e.g., ‘1,’ ‘2,’ ‘3’) may be more prone to horizontal conceptualization. In this study, we used a task with free response options to see where participants would place quantity words (‘most,’ ‘more,’ ‘less,’ ‘least’), numerals (‘2,’ ‘4,’ ‘7,’ ‘9’), time words (‘past,’ ‘future,’ ‘earliest,’ ‘earlier,’ ‘later,’ ‘latest’) and emotional valence words (‘best,’ ‘better,’ ‘worse,’ ‘worst’). We find that for quantity words, the vertical axis was preferred; whereas for numerals, participants preferred the horizontal axis. For time concepts, participants preferred the horizontal axis; and for emotional valence, they preferred the vertical axis. Across all tasks, participants tended to use specific axes (horizontal, vertical), rather than combining these two axes in diagonal responses. These results shed light on the spatial nature of abstract thought.

Highlights

Specialty section: This article was submitted to Cognition, a section of the journal Frontiers in PsychologyReceived: May 2018 Accepted: October 2018 Published: 14 November 2018Citation: Woodin G and Winter B (2018) Placing Abstract Concepts in Space: Quantity, Time and Emotional Valence
The quantitative results from Experiment 1 reveal a dominant down-to-up vertical representation for quantity, in agreement with some studies (Tversky et al, 1991; Winter and Matlock, 2013) but not others (Fischer and Campens, 2009; Holmes and Lourenco, 2012). This result might be explained by the proposal that vague quantities expressed linguistically are conceptualized vertically, whereas exact numerals are conceptualized horizontally (Winter et al, 2015b)
Not all conceptual domains are created equal: spatial representations differ across quantity, time, and emotional valence

Summary

Introduction

Specialty section: This article was submitted to Cognition, a section of the journal Frontiers in PsychologyReceived: May 2018 Accepted: October 2018 Published: 14 November 2018. Proponents of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (e.g., Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Gibbs, 1994; Kövecses, 2002) and embodied cognition more generally (e.g., Barsalou, 1999; Wilson, 2002; Glenberg et al, 2014) have long emphasized that abstract concepts may be grounded in terms of concrete ones, such as space. Our reliance on space for abstract thought is reflected in the language we use to talk about quantity, time and emotional valence; for example, English speakers speak of ‘high’ and ‘low’ numbers, look ‘forward’ to future events and look ‘back’ on past ones, and profess to feel either ‘up’ or ‘down’ (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Casasanto and Boroditsky, 2008; Winter et al, 2015a). The use of horizontal and vertical axes in particular has been shown to be prolific in the grounding of abstract concepts, leading us to imagine time flowing from

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