Mental Timeline Research Articles

The Variability of Mental Timeline in Vertical Dimension

People often use concrete spatial terms to represent abstract time. Previous studies have shown that mental timeline (MTL) is represented along a horizontal axis. Studies of the mental timeline have demonstrated that compared with English speakers, Mandarin speakers are more likely to think about time vertically (up-down) than horizontally (left-right/front-back). Prior studies have suggested that MTL in the up and down dimensions originated from temporal-spatial metaphors in language. However, there are still a large number of perceptual experiences in the up and down dimensions, such as visual and sensorimotor experience. Then does the visual experience in daily life affect the MTL in the vertical dimension? This study is aimed to investigate whether visual experience can promote or activate the opposite direction of MTL from implicit and explicit levels. The results showed that when the time information in the task was not prominent, the direction of vertical MTL cannot be affected by ascending or descending perceptual experience. While when the time information was prominent, whether the task was implicit or explicit, compared with the control group, watching the top-down scene significantly increased the top-down direction selection, while in the implicit task, watching the bottom-up scene made the top-down MTL disappear. To the best of our knowledge, our study provides the first evidence that the flexibility of space–time associations in vertical dimension extends beyond explicit and embraces even implicit levels. This study shows that the vertical MTL is activated in certain conditions and could be affected by the visual experience.

The vertical space-time association.

The space-time interaction suggests a left-to-right directionality in the mind's representation of elapsing time. However, studies showing a possible vertical time representation are scarce and contradictory. In Experiment 1, 32 participants had to judge the duration (200, 300, 500, or 600 ms) of the target stimulus that appeared at the top, centre, or bottom of the screen, compared with a reference stimulus (400 ms) that always appeared in the centre of the screen. In Experiment 2, 32 participants were administered the same procedure, but the reference stimulus appeared at the top, centre, or bottom of the screen and the target stimulus was fixed in the centre location. In both experiments, a space-time interaction was found with an association between short durations and bottom response key as well as between long durations and top key. The evidence of a vertical mental timeline was further confirmed by the distance effect with a lower level of performance for durations close to that of the reference stimulus. The results suggest a bottom-to-top mapping of time representation, more in line with the metaphor "more is up."

Vertical and horizontal mental timeline in Persian Speakers

Vertical and horizontal mental timeline in Persian Speakers

Mental representation of autobiographical memories along the sagittal mental timeline: Evidence from spatiotemporal interference

Time is usually conceived of in terms of space: many natural languages refer to time according to a back-to-front axis. Indeed, whereas the past is usually conceived to be “behind us”, the future is considered to be “in front of us.” Despite temporal coding is pivotal for the development of autonoetic consciousness, little is known about the organization of autobiographical memories along this axis. Here we developed a spatial compatibility task (SCT) to test the organization of autobiographical memories along the sagittal plane, using spatiotemporal interference. Twenty-one participants were asked to recall both episodic and semantic autobiographical memories (EAM and SAM, respectively) to be used in the SCT. Then, during the SCT, they were asked to decide whether each event occurred before or after the event presented right before, using a response code that could be compatible with the back-to-front axis (future in front) or not (future at back). We found that performance was significantly worse during the non-compatible condition, especially for EAM. The results are discussed in light of the evidence for spatiotemporal encoding of episodic autobiographical memories, taking into account possible mechanisms explaining compatibility effects.

The future is in front, to the right, or below: Development of spatial representations of time in three dimensions

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.

Enaction Through Co-speech Gesture: The Rhetorical Handing of the Mental Timeline

AbstractThis chapter will explore theembodied,enactedandembeddednature of co-speech gestures in the meaning-making process of time conceptualization. We will review three different contextualized communicative exchanges extracted from American Television interviews. First, we will offer a step-by-step form description of the different gesture realizations performed by the speakers as well as a brief description of the gaze fixation patterns. After that, we will offer a functional analysis which will interpret the gesturing patters in terms of their communicative goals on their respective communicative contexts as well as the complex interplay between verbal and non-verbal communication. The resulting interaction between speech, gesture and other bodily movements give rise to a dynamic system that allows for the construction of highly complex meanings: time co-speech gestures play a crucial role in the simulation of virtual anchors for complex mental networks that integrate conceptual and perceptual information.

Can co-speech gestures alone carry the mental time line?

Time and space have been shown to be interlinked in people's minds. To what extent can co-speech gestures influence thinking about time, over and above spoken language? In this study, we use the ambiguous question "Next Wednesday's meeting has been moved forward two days, what day is it on now?" to show that people either respond "Monday" or "Friday," depending on gesture. We manipulated both language (using either the adverb "forward," or the adverb "backward") and gesture (forward and backward movement), thus creating matches and mismatches between speech and gesture. Results show that the speech manipulation exerts a stronger influence on people's temporal perspectives than gesture. Moreover, the effect of gesture disappears completely for certain hand shapes and if non-movement language is used ("changed by two days" as opposed to "moved by two days"). We additionally find that the strength of the gesture effect is moderated by likability: When people like the gesturer, they are more prone to assuming their perspective, which completely changes the meaning of forward and backward gestural movements. Altogether, our results suggest that gesture does play a role in thinking about time, but this role is auxiliary when compared with speech, and the degree to which gesture matters depends on one's social relation to the gesturer. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

How do Mandarin speakers conceptualize time? Beyond the horizontal and vertical dimensions

Mandarin speakers, similar to speakers of most other languages around the world, tend to conceptualize time in terms of space. However, it has been supposed that Mandarin speakers conceptualize time along both horizontal and vertical axes (i.e., along two mental timelines). This is attributed to two main factors. The first is the availability of both horizontal and vertical spatiotemporal metaphors in their language (in contrast to most other languages which rely predominantly on horizontal metaphors), and the second is the switch from the traditional Chinese vertical (still used occasionally currently) to the Western horizontal writing direction. This paper focuses on the vertical axis, readdressing the issues concerning the use of vertical spatiotemporal metaphors and the representations of time underlying these linguistic devices. Although numerous studies have been conducted on the topic, they have provided investigations only associated with the top-to-bottom mental timeline (i.e., with the past on the top and the future on the bottom). This, however, is not sufficient for understanding how Chinese people conceptualize time in terms of vertical metaphors. This paper proposes an extended theoretical explanation of vertical spatiotemporal metaphors and highlights that there might be a cyclical concept of time underlying the use of these metaphors.

The correlations in experience principle: How culture shapes concepts of time and number.

People use space to conceptualize abstract domains like time and number. This tendency may be a cognitive universal, but the specifics of people's implicit space-time and space-number associations vary across cultures. In Western cultures, both time and numbers are arranged in people's minds along an imaginary horizontal line, from left to right, but in other cultures the directions of the mental timeline (MTL) and mental number line (MNL) are reversed. How does culture shape our abstract concepts? Using time and number as a testbed, we propose and test a general principle, which we call the CORrelations in Experience (CORE) principle, according to which different aspects of experience should selectively affect different abstract concepts. Across 3 training experiments, the MTL was shaped by experiences that provide a correlation between space and time, whereas the MNL was shaped by experiences that provide a correlation between space and number. These findings reveal that the MTL and MNL have distinct experiential bases, supporting the CORE principle and challenging the widespread claim that both mappings are determined by a common set of cultural experiences (e.g., reading, writing, visual scanning). The CORE principle provides an account of how domains like time and number, universal fixtures of the natural world, can be conceptualized in culture-specific ways: People spatialize abstract domains in their minds according to the ways those domains are spatialized in their experience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Can mental time lines co-exist in 3D space?

A growing body of evidence suggested that time can be represented separately either on the lateral, sagittal or vertical axis. However, it is still not clear whether these mental time lines from different origins could co-exist, or compete with each other such that if one is selected, the others are inhibited? The present study addressed this question using a multi-dimensional free-choice paradigm with Mandarin speakers in three experiments. The results showed that significant spatial-temporal congruency effects were found both on the lateral and sagittal/vertical axes in the horizontal/coronal plane either in a temporal judgment relevant or irrelevant task. By contrast, the spatial-temporal congruency effects did not appear at the same time on the sagittal and vertical axes in the sagittal plane. These results supported that lateral mental time line could co-exist with the other two, while sagittal and vertical mental time lines could not co-exist with each other. This finding implied that the space-time mapping mechanism is different between the lateral axis and the sagittal and vertical axes, whereas it is the same for the latter two axes.

Keeping Track of Time: The Role of Spatial and Embodied Cognition in the Comprehension of Nonlinear Storyworlds

a B s t r a c t: What allows an audience to make sense of stories with complex nonlinear time structures that are radically different from everyday experience? To address this question, we distinguish between two types of narrative nonlinearity: nonlinear storytelling (a non-chronological presentation of events in the narration) and nonlinear storyworlds (nonlinearity as a feature of the narrated world, for instance by way of time-travel or temporal loops). With most scholarly attention focusing on the former, here we focus on the latter, as the question of what allows audiences to make sense of strange and impossible storyworld temporalities has remained somewhat overlooked. Drawing on the available research on text comprehension, we first discuss how both strategies of nonlinearity affect narrative comprehension differently. We then ask what cognitive abilities allow spectators to engage with nonlinear storyworlds. Drawing on insights from conceptual metaphor theory and mental timeline theory, we propose that the comprehension of nonlinear storyworlds is facilitated by the cognitive ability to mentally represent time in terms of space. By metaphorically blending spatial and embodied concepts into narrative timelines, strategies of spatial mental representation allow spectators to conceive and comprehend various forms of phenomenologically non-experienceable time structures—a hypothesis we seek to demonstrate through several cases of nonlinear storyworlds from contemporary complex cinema. k e y W o r D s: Narrative complexity, nonlinearity, puzzle films, conceptual metaphors, mental timeline

Time-conjunctive representations of future events.

It is widely accepted that people can predict the relative imminence of future events. However, it is unknown whether the timing of future events is represented using only a "strength-like" estimate or if future events are represented conjunctively with their position on a mental timeline. We examined how people judge temporal relationships among anticipated future events using the novel Judgment of Anticipated Co-Occurrence (JACO) task. Participants were initially trained on a stream of letters sampled from a probabilistically repeating sequence. During test trials, the stream was interrupted with pairs of probe letters and the participants' task was to choose the probe letter they expected to appear in the stream during a lagged target window 4-6 items (4.3-8.5 s) in the future. Participants performed above chance as they gained experience with the task. Because the correct item was sometimes the more imminent probe letter and other times the less imminent probe letter, these results rule out the possibility that participants relied solely on thresholding a strength-like estimate of temporal imminence. Rather, these results suggest that participants held (1) temporally organized predictions of the future letters in the stream, (2) a temporal estimate of the lagged target window, and (3) some means to compare the two and evaluate their temporal alignment. Response time increased with the lag to the more imminent probe letter, suggesting that participants accessed the future sequentially in a manner that mirrors scanning processes previously proposed to operate on memory representations in the short-term judgment of recency task.

The Development of Young Children’s Mental Timeline in Relation to Emergent Literacy Skills

ABSTRACTThe abstract concept of time is conceptualized as moving linearly across space, known as the mental timeline (MTL). The direction of our MTL is consistent with reading direction. English speakers, who read left to right, think of past on the left and future on the right; the reverse is true of Hebrew speakers, who read right to left. However, it is unknown whether familiarity with reading direction facilitates the development of the MTL or whether it develops prior to becoming familiar with a language’s direction. This study examined the relationship between the development of the MTL and emergent literacy skills in English-speaking preschoolers and kindergartners. Results reveal a preference for spatially displaying time as moving horizontally from left to right in preschoolers, which is strengthened in kindergartners and predicted by emergent literacy skills. Results indicate that emergent literacy skills are related to the early development of the MTL, providing insight into the origins of the mental timeline.

A robust anchoring effect in linear ordering.

The robustness of effects indicating a spatial component associated with abstract reasoning is tested. Judgements regarding hierarchical orderings tend to be faster and more accurate when the dominant element in any pair from the order (e.g., the older, richer) is presented on the left of the screen as compared with the right (left-anchoring effect). This signature effect is investigated in three conditions (Experiment 1), each implementing a different timing regime for the elements in each pair, during learning. Thereby, the construction of a mental representation of the ordering was exposed to a potentially competing spatial simulation, that is, the well-known "mental timeline" with orientation from left (present) to right (future). First, the left-anchoring effect for order representations remained significant when timeline information was congruent with the presumed left-anchoring process, that is, the dominant element in a pair was always presented first. Second, the same effect remained also significant when the timeline-related information was random, that is, the dominant element being presented either first or second. Third, the same effect was found to be still significant, when the timeline-related information was contrary to the left-anchoring process, that is, the dominant element being presented always second. Experiment 2 replicates the target effect under random timeline information, controlling for colour as a stimulus feature. The results are discussed in the context of a theoretical model that integrates basic assumptions about acquired reading/writing habits as a scaffold for spatial simulation and primacy/dominance representation within such spatial simulations.

The Space-Time Congruency Effect: A Meta-Analysis.

Several reaction time (RT) studies report faster responses when responses to temporal information are arranged in a spatially congruent manner than when this arrangement is incongruent. The resulting space-time congruency effect is commonly attributed to a culturally salient localization of temporal information along a mental timeline (e.g., a mental timeline that runs from left to right). The present study aims to provide a compilation of the published RT studies on this time-space association in order to estimate the size of its effect and the extent of potential publication bias in this field of research. In this meta-analysis, three types of task are distinguished due to hitherto existing empirical findings. These findings suggest that the extent to which time is made relevant to the experimental task has a systematic impact on whether or not the mental timeline is activated. The results of this meta-analysis corroborate these considerations: First, experiments that make time a task-relevant dimension have a mean effect size of d=0.46. Second, in experiments in which time is task irrelevant, the effect size does not significantly deviate from zero. Third, temporal priming studies have a surprisingly high mean effect size of d=0.47, which, however, should be adjusted to d=0.36 due to publication bias.

Closing the symbolic reference gap to support flexible reasoning about the passage of time.

This commentary relates Hoerl & McCormack's dual systems perspective to models of cognitive development emphasizing representational redescription and the role of culturally constructed tools, including language, in providing flexible formats for thinking. We describe developmental processes that enable children to construct a mental time line, situate themselves in time, and overcome the primacy of the here and now.

Space and time in episodic memory: Effects of linearity and directionality on memory for spatial location and temporal order in children and adults.

Episodic memory is a critical capacity that involves remembering past events along with their spatial and temporal contexts. Relatively little is known about the relations between spatial and temporal information in long-term memory in children or adults. The present research examined the influence of the mental timeline (linear horizontal display extending from the left to right direction for English speakers) on memory for events and their spatial and temporal features in 7-year-olds, 9-year-olds, 11-year-olds and young adults (N = 146). During encoding, participants studied triplets of objects, varying on two dimensions of the mental timeline: linearity (whether objects were presented in linear succession or not) and direction (whether objects were presented from left-to-right or right-to-left). After a delay, during retrieval, participants were tested on their memory for individual objects, and either the spatial location or temporal order of the objects. We found that overall accuracy for spatial location was higher than accuracy for temporal order, and there was a parallel developmental trajectory for both these aspects of memory. Across age groups we found that memory for temporal order, but not spatial location, was influenced by linearity and direction (i.e., match to mental timeline). Thus, in both children and adults the spatiotemporal mental timeline supported memory for temporal order, converging with predictions generated within domains of language and thought and enhancing our understanding of how space and time are represented in the mind.

When specific action biases meet nonspecific preparation: Event repetition modulates the variable-foreperiod effect.

Preparing for the moment of action speeds up reaction time (RT) performance even if the particular response is unknown beforehand. When the preparatory interval, or foreperiod (FP), varies unpredictably between trials, responses usually become faster with increasing FP length. This variable-FP effect has been demonstrated to partly originate from trial-to-trial sequential effects of FP length, which are asymmetric as they occur mainly in short-FP but not in long-FP trials. In two experiments, we examined whether and how event-specific biases arising from previous target processing and responding affect both variable-FP and sequential FP effects. We found that trial-to-trial repetitions (vs. alternations) of imperative events produced response time benefits in short-FP but not in long-FP trials, almost eliminating the variable-FP effect, while the sequential FP effect remained intact. This asymmetric contribution to speeded performance in variable-FP settings suggests that sequential event-specific biases may be highly transient and not necessarily an integral part of the mental representations that guide time-based expectancy, or may be overridden by high levels of nonspecific preparation in long-FP trials. In conclusion, temporal preparation appears to be a nonspecific mechanism (i.e., generally not bound to particular event features) for prioritizing certain positions on the mental time line, on which event-specific short-term biases are superimposed if time-based preparation is weak. (PsycINFO Database Record

Space–time interaction: visuo-spatial processing affects the temporal focus of mind wandering

Our understanding of mind wandering (MW) has dramatically increased over the past decade. Studies have shown that in the vast majority of cases, MW is directed to times other than the present, and a bias toward the future has been reported (prospective bias). The processing of time is not independent of the processing of space: humans represent time along a spatial continuum, on a "mental time line" (MTL). In cultures with a left to right reading/writing system, the MTL expands from left to right. Capitalizing on these findings, here we aimed at investigating the effects of visuo-spatial processing on the temporal orientation of spontaneous MW, and specifically we asked whether we could steer the temporal focus of MW towards the past or the future, by experimentally inducing a leftward and a rightward orienting of attention, respectively. To this aim, we experimentally manipulated the spatial orientation demands associated with the focal task in two independent groups, with a leftward orienting of attention (left-pointing arrows, LA group) and a rightward orienting of attention (right-pointing arrows, RA group). We found that the temporal orientation of MW critically depended on the spatial orientation demands of the task: specifically, the proportion of spontaneous past-oriented MW episodes was higher under the induction of a leftward orienting attention (LA group) than under the induction of a rightward orienting attention (RA group). The opposite pattern was found for spontaneous future-oriented MW episodes. Possible mechanisms involved in this effect and their implications for research on MW and spontaneous cognition are discussed.

Nature and nurture effects on the spatiality of the mental time line

The nature-nurture debate regarding the origin of mental lines is fundamental for cognitive neuroscience. We examined natural-nurture effects on the mental time line, applying three different challenges to the directionality of time representation. We tested (1) patients with left-neglect and healthy participants, who are (2) left-to-right or right-to-left readers/writers, using (3) a lateralized left-right button press or a vocal mode in response to a mental time task, which asks participants to judge whether events have already happened in the past or are still to happen in the future. Using lateralized responses, a spatial-temporal association of response code (STEARC) effect was found, in concordance with the cultural effects. With vocal responses (no lateralization), past and future events showed similar results in both cultures. In patients with neglect, who have a deficit of spatial attention in processing the left side of space, future events were processed more slowly and less accurately than past events in both cultures. Our results indicate the existence of a “natural” disposition to map past and future events along a horizontal mental time line, which is affected by the different ways in which spatial representation of time is introduced.