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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 ti...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8759226/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35035370 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.782975 |
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author | He, Jiaoyan Bi, Cuihua Jiang, Hao Meng, Jianan |
author_facet | He, Jiaoyan Bi, Cuihua Jiang, Hao Meng, Jianan |
author_sort | He, Jiaoyan |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8759226 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-87592262022-01-15 The Variability of Mental Timeline in Vertical Dimension He, Jiaoyan Bi, Cuihua Jiang, Hao Meng, Jianan Front Psychol Psychology 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. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-12-31 /pmc/articles/PMC8759226/ /pubmed/35035370 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.782975 Text en Copyright © 2021 He, Bi, Jiang and Meng. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology He, Jiaoyan Bi, Cuihua Jiang, Hao Meng, Jianan The Variability of Mental Timeline in Vertical Dimension |
title | The Variability of Mental Timeline in Vertical Dimension |
title_full | The Variability of Mental Timeline in Vertical Dimension |
title_fullStr | The Variability of Mental Timeline in Vertical Dimension |
title_full_unstemmed | The Variability of Mental Timeline in Vertical Dimension |
title_short | The Variability of Mental Timeline in Vertical Dimension |
title_sort | variability of mental timeline in vertical dimension |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8759226/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35035370 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.782975 |
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