Consciousness, brain, neuroplasticity

Abstract

In this paper we examine whether experience with spatial metaphors for time has an influence on people’s representation of time. In particular we ask whether spatio-temporal metaphors can have both chronic and immediate effects on temporal thinking. In Study 1, we examine the prevalence of ego-moving representations for time in Mandarin speakers, English speakers, and Mandarin-English (ME) bilinguals. As predicted by observations in linguistic analyses, we find that Mandarin speakers are less likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are English speakers. Further, we find that ME bilinguals tested in English are less likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are English monolinguals (an effect of L1 on meaning-making in L2), and also that ME bilinguals tested in Mandarin are more likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are Mandarin monolinguals (an effect of L2 on meaning-making in L1). These findings demonstrate that habits of metaphor use in one language can influence temporal reasoning in another language, suggesting the metaphors can have a chronic effect on patterns in thought. In Study 2 we test Mandarin speakers using either horizontal or vertical metaphors in the immediate context of the task. We find that Mandarin speakers are more likely to construct front-back representations of time when understanding front-back metaphors, and more likely to construct up-down representations of time when understanding up-down metaphors. These findings demonstrate that spatio-temporal metaphors can also have an immediate influence on temporal reasoning. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that the metaphors we use to talk about time have both immediate and long-term consequences for how we conceptualize and reason about this fundamental domain of experience.

How We Think about Temporal Words: A Gestural Priming Study in English and Chinese

“…This is in line with a psycholinguistic point of view that almost all languages in the world associate time along the sagittal axis (e.g., Radden, 2004). Thus, the metaphors speakers use may play a causal role in how people construct temporal representations, consistent with the claims made by recent (Casasanto and Boroditsky, 2008; Santiago et al, 2011; Lai and Boroditsky, 2013) and traditional (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999) theories. Furthermore, these metaphors continue to affect how mental timelines are structured, even in their absence.…”

Conceptual and lexical effects on gestures: the case of vertical spatial metaphors for time in Chinese

“…Our results are consistent with previous studies on forced gesturing about time. When participants were asked explicitly to point to space for time conceptions, Chinese speakers were more likely to point vertically for time conceptions with vertical spatial metaphors than for those with non-vertical spatial metaphors, or without any spatial metaphor (Fuhrman et al, 2011;Lai & Boroditsky, 2013). Furthermore, by comparing the temporal gestures for the same time conceptions produced by Chinese-English bilinguals, we provide new evidence for the effect of cross-linguistic choices on gesture production.…”

Is sadness blue? The problem of using figurative language for emotions on psychological tests

“…Because of these strict criteria, we filtered out almost 75 % of the participants from India. Previous research has shown that bilingual people who are very fluent with a language interpret metaphors in a way that is more similar to monolinguals in that language and that the language used during a study influences how bilinguals think about metaphors (Lai & Boroditsky, 2013). Thus, using English-language materials to test participants who are very comfortable with English created a conservative test for differences between the groups.…”