Time does not flow without language: Spatial distance affects temporal duration regardless of movement or direction
Time does not flow without language: Spatial distance affects temporal duration regardless of movement or direction
复制标题
DOI：
10.3758/s13423-013-0414-3
复制
发表时间：
2013-10-01
影响因子：
3.5
通讯作者：
Holler, Judith
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Cai, Zhenguang G.;Connell, Louise;Holler, Judith
许多证据表明，人们认为时间是在横向空间中定向流动的（例如，从左到右为英语使用者）。然而，这种现象从来没有被测试在一个完全非语言的范式，无论是刺激或任务使用语言标签，这提出了一种可能性，即时间是定向只有当阅读/写作方向已被唤起。在本研究中，讲英语的参与者观看了一段视频，其中演员一边做手势一边唱音符，并通过按下按钮来再现所唱音符的持续时间。结果表明，相对于短距离手势，长距离手势的音符感知持续时间增加。这种效应对于从左向右和从右向左移动的手势同样强烈，并且不依赖于描绘空间运动的手势;表现空间距离的静态手势出现了较弱的效果。由于我们的手势刺激和时间再现任务都是非语言的，我们得出结论，时间的空间表征是无方向的：运动有助于，但不是必要的，在横向时间轴的时间信息的表示。
Much evidence has suggested that people conceive of time as flowing directionally in transverse space (e.g., from left to right for English speakers). However, this phenomenon has never been tested in a fully nonlinguistic paradigm where neither stimuli nor task use linguistic labels, which raises the possibility that time is directional only when reading/writing direction has been evoked. In the present study, English-speaking participants viewed a video where an actor sang a note while gesturing and reproduced the duration of the sung note by pressing a button. Results showed that the perceived duration of the note was increased by a long-distance gesture, relative to a short-distance gesture. This effect was equally strong for gestures moving from left to right and from right to left and was not dependent on gestures depicting movement through space; a weaker version of the effect emerged with static gestures depicting spatial distance. Since both our gesture stimuli and temporal reproduction task were nonlinguistic, we conclude that the spatial representation of time is nondirectional: Movement contributes, but is not necessary, to the representation of temporal information in a transverse timeline.