Of magnitudes and metaphors: Explaining cognitive interactions between space, time, and number

Winter, Bodo; Marghetis, Tyler; Matlock, Teenie

doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2014.10.015

Cited by 164 publications

(145 citation statements)

References 155 publications

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“…Recently, a growing body of results has supported the idea that the left-right axis is a relevant spatial reference in order to metaphorically understand continuous abstract concepts. Indeed, mapping between such an axis and concepts such as numbers, time, and even politics is now strongly supported (Casasanto & Boroditsky, 2008;Dehaene, Bossini, & Giraux, 1993;Oppenheimer & Trail, 2010;Ren, Nicholls, Ma, & Chen, 2011; for recent reviews, see Bonn & Cantlon, 2012;Dijkstra, Eerland, Zijlmans, & Post, 2014;Winter et al, 2015). Together with our present results regarding the concept of valence, we assume the possibility that humans could have a kind of general tendency to represent continuous abstract concepts via the metaphor of a left-right continuum.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 52%

“…Therefore, it has remained an open question whether the space-valence mapping is categorical or continuous, since clear evidence has been established for mappings between source and target continua such as space and time (Casasanto, & Boroditsky, 2008), space and pitch (Dolscheid, Shayan, Majid, & Casasanto, 2013), and space and numbers (Winter, Marghetis, & Matlock, 2015). In the present study, we addressed this question by asking participants to view faces that vary continuously in valence and to arrange them along a spatial continuum.…”

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confidence: 99%

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A continuous mapping between space and valence with left- and right-handers

et al. 2015

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In this research, we examined whether emotional valence could correspond to a continuous lateral bias in space, according to a mental metaphor that establishes the mapping between a concrete domain (space) and an abstract one (valence). Because acting with one's dominant hand is associated with fluency and positive valence (the bodily specificity hypothesis, or BSH), we asked strong right-and left-handers to perform two spatial location tasks using emotional faces with seven levels of valence. We hypothesized and showed through two studies that, according to the BSH, extreme valenced stimuli (as compared to moderate and weak ones) would be located more at the extremity of a horizontal line, according to the correspondences between handedness and the different valences of the stimuli. This research establishes that spatial and continuous mapping of emotions was obtained while controlling for motivational direction.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 52%

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confidence: 99%

A continuous mapping between space and valence with left- and right-handers

et al. 2015

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“…A growing body of evidence suggests that time is structured in terms of space (e.g. Bonato, Zorzi, & Umiltà, 2012;Winter, Marghetis, & Matlock, 2015). In order to conceptualize the mental representation of time via a spatial frame of reference, different authors have suggested a "mental time line" (Barsalou, 2008;Boroditsky, 2000;Casasanto & Boroditsky, 2008;Stocker, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A current question of interest is when does time associate with space (e.g., Tillman, Tulagan, & Barner, 2015;Winter et al, 2015). Does the mental time line lead to an immediate structuring of incoming past and future related information with the left and right representational space, or does this association only emerge when information is retrieved from memory?…”

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confidence: 99%

Time in the eye of the beholder: Gaze position reveals spatial-temporal associations during encoding and memory retrieval of future and past

2016

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Time in the eye of the beholder: Gaze position reveals spatial-temporal associations during encoding and memory retrieval of future and past AbstractTime is grounded in various ways, and previous studies point to a "mental time line" with past associated with the left, and future with the right side. In this study, we investigated whether spontaneous eye movements on a blank screen would follow a mental time line during encoding, free recall, and recognition of past and future items. In all three stages of processing, gaze position was more rightward during future items compared to past items.Moreover, horizontal gaze position during encoding predicted horizontal gaze position during free recall and recognition. We conclude that mental time line and the stored gaze position during encoding assist memory retrieval of past vs. future items. Our findings highlight the spatial nature of temporal representations.

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“…For instance, the conceptual metaphor account proposes that people recruit spatial experience (e.g., length) to support their understanding of durations (e.g., a longer length representing a longer duration) Casasanto & Boroditsky, 2008; see also Winter, Marghetis, & Matlock, 2015). The account is built on the philosophical claim that people metaphorically reconstruct a more concrete domain (e.g., space) to conceptualize about a more abstract domain (e.g., time, emotion) (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999.…”

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confidence: 99%

Cross-dimensional magnitude interaction is modulated by representational noise: Evidence from space-time interaction

Wang¹,

Cai²

2017

Preprint

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Magnitudes along different dimensions (e.g., space and time) tend to interact with each other in perception, with some magnitude dimensions more susceptible to cross-dimensional interference than others. What causes such asymmetries in cross-dimensional magnitude interaction is being debated. The current study investigated whether the representational noise of magnitudes modulates the (a)symmetry in space-time interaction. In three experiments using different formats of length, we showed that dynamic unfilled lengths result in a higher representational noise than either static unfilled length or static filled length. Correspondingly, we observed that the time-on-space effect was larger for dynamic unfilled lengths than for static unfilled length or static filled length (and it did not differ between the latter two). Further correlational analyses showed that the susceptibility of a target dimension to the influence of a concurrent dimension increased as a function of participants’ representational noise in the target dimension (e.g., noisier length representations, a larger effect of stimulus duration on length reproduction). In all, our study showed that the representational noise of space and time modulate the way the two dimensions interact. These findings suggest that cross-dimensional magnitude interactions arise as a result of memory interference, with noisier magnitudes being more prone to being nudged by concurrent magnitudes in other dimensions. Such memory interference can be seen as a result of Bayesian inference with correlated priors between magnitude dimensions.

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Of magnitudes and metaphors: Explaining cognitive interactions between space, time, and number

Cited by 164 publications

References 155 publications

A continuous mapping between space and valence with left- and right-handers

A continuous mapping between space and valence with left- and right-handers

Time in the eye of the beholder: Gaze position reveals spatial-temporal associations during encoding and memory retrieval of future and past

Cross-dimensional magnitude interaction is modulated by representational noise: Evidence from space-time interaction

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