Embodied time: Effect of reading expertise on the spatial representation of past and future

Abstract

How do people grasp the abstract concept of time? It has been argued that abstract concepts, such as future and past, are grounded in sensorimotor experience. When responses to words that refer to the past or the future are either spatially compatible or incompatible with a left-to-right timeline, a space-time congruency effect is observed. In the present study, we investigated whether reading expertise determines the strength of the space-time congruency effect, which would suggest that learning to read and write drives the effect. Using a temporal categorization task, we compared two types of space-time congruency effects, one where spatial incongruency was generated by the location of the stimuli on the screen and one where it was generated by the location of the responses on the keyboard. While the first type of incongruency was visuo-spatial only, the second involved the motor system. Results showed stronger space-time congruency effects for the second type of incongruency (i.e., when the motor system was involved) than for the first type (visuo-spatial). Crucially, reading expertise, as measured by a standardized reading test, predicted the size of the space-time congruency effects. Altogether, these results reinforce the claim that the spatial representation of time is partially mediated by the motor system and partially grounded in spatially-directed movement, such as reading or writing.

Vertical Mental Timeline Is Not Influenced by VisuoSpatial Processing

“…However, we found a correlation between the b coefficient, which displayed a linear model defined by the word order of the Time-to-Position task, and the direction/magnitude of the STEARC effect, suggesting a convergence of the results found in both tasks. In line with Grasso et al [28] (see also [27] for the horizontal space), the spatial-temporal association was stronger (or observable) when it was implemented via a motor response (or arose at the response selection/execution stage), in a similar way to what has been proposed for numbers [53]. Thus, the results of Experiment 1 seem to confirm and extend along the vertical dimension the findings provided by Fabbri et al [13,14].…”

“…Although in Experiment 2A the stimuli were arranged in a downward way (from top to bottom) and displayed in different positions on the screen, we found a vertical STEARC effect in both speeded binary and Time-to-Position tasks. Thus, the result pattern not only confirmed a bottom-to-top representation of time, but also the relevance of the spatial information provided by two response keys for the spatial-temporal association [13,14,16,23,27,28,31]. These considerations were further confirmed by the analysis of NEs, despite the triple interaction.…”

“…Based on the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (EHI) score [59], 53 participants were right-handed (M = 85.00; SD = 17.86) and 8 were left-handed (M = −68.00; SD = 29.97). Data from 5 participants (4 females and 1 male) were not included because they reported more than 25% of errors (M = 46.06%, SD = 7.99%; see Grasso et al [28] for similar exclusion criteria of outliers). Thus, the data of the remaining 56 participants (49 females; mean age = 24.41 years; SD = 3.26 years; 50 right-handed) were analyzed.…”

“…Using a visuospatial priming paradigm, Di Bono et al [24] found that leftward cues induced an underestimation of temporal duration and rightward cues induced overestimation, in a similar way to the study performed by Vicario et al [25], who showed that the judgments of temporal duration were influenced by the spatial position of stimuli. These data might suggest that the experience determined by reading and writing habits in a specific culture can modulate the STEARC effect (but see [26][27][28] for contrasting results). Indeed, the rightward (or leftward for Arabic culture) movement of the eye during the reading and writing experience modulates the chronological order in which the left and right sides of space are experienced along a left-to-right direction [19,29].…”

Horizontal mapping of time-related words in first and second language

“…As with the vertical axis, the orientation of one’s horizontal MTL may be modified by cultural effects, e.g., reading direction habits differing across languages 14 , 28 , 46 , 47 . Indeed, the “classical” left-to-right orientation of the MTL has been confirmed for left-to-right reading and writing systems 48 , 49 while its reversed direction has been documented for cultures with right-to-left reading and writing habits 47 , 49 , 50 .…”