The Whorfian Time Warp: Representing Duration Through the Language Hourglass
The Whorfian Time Warp: Representing Duration Through the Language Hourglass
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DOI：
10.1037/xge0000314
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发表时间：
2017-07-01
影响因子：
4.1
通讯作者：
Athanasopoulos, Panos
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bylund, Emanuel;Athanasopoulos, Panos
人类是如何构建时间流逝的心理表征的？普遍主义者声称，像时间这样的抽象概念在人类中是普遍的。相反，语言相对性假说认为不同语言的使用者对时长的表征不同。然而，语言对持续时间表征的确切影响是未知的。在这里，我们表明，语言可以在改变人类的心理物理经验的时间有一个强大的作用。相反的普遍性的帐户，我们发现语言特定的干扰持续时间的复制任务，刺激持续时间与其物理增长相冲突。当再现持续时间，瑞典语的人被误导的刺激长度，和西班牙语的人被误导的刺激大小/数量。这些模式符合这些语言中持续时间大小的首选表达方式（瑞典语：长/短时间;西班牙语：多/小时间）。重要的是，西班牙语和瑞典语双语者在两种语言中执行任务时表现出不同的干扰，这取决于语言背景。同一个人的这种变化行为揭示了迄今为止没有文献记载的时间表征的灵活性水平。最后，与语言相对论假设相反，语言干扰仅限于困难的辨别（即，当刺激只在持续时间和增长方面有细微变化时），并且当从任务中去除语言线索时被消除。这些结果揭示了人类时间表征作为高度适应性信息处理系统的一部分的可塑性。
How do humans construct their mental representations of the passage of time? The universalist account claims that abstract concepts like time are universal across humans. In contrast, the linguistic relativity hypothesis holds that speakers of different languages represent duration differently. The precise impact of language on duration representation is, however, unknown. Here, we show that language can have a powerful role in transforming humans' psychophysical experience of time. Contrary to the universalist account, we found language-specific interference in a duration reproduction task, where stimulus duration conflicted with its physical growth. When reproducing duration, Swedish speakers were misled by stimulus length, and Spanish speakers were misled by stimulus size/quantity. These patterns conform to preferred expressions of duration magnitude in these languages (Swedish: long/short time; Spanish: much/small time). Critically, Spanish-Swedish bilinguals performing the task in both languages showed different interference depending on language context. Such shifting behavior within the same individual reveals hitherto undocumented levels of flexibility in time representation. Finally, contrary to the linguistic relativity hypothesis, language interference was confined to difficult discriminations (i.e., when stimuli varied only subtly in duration and growth), and was eliminated when linguistic cues were removed from the task. These results reveal the malleable nature of human time representation as part of a highly adaptive information processing system.