Is the Future the Right Time?

Abstract

Spanish and English speakers tend to conceptualize time as running from left to right along a mental line. Previous research suggests that this representational strategy arises from the participants' exposure to a left-to-right writing system. However, direct evidence supporting this assertion suffers from several limitations and relies only on the visual modality. This study subjected to a direct test the reading hypothesis using an auditory task. Participants from two groups (Spanish and Hebrew) differing in the directionality of their orthographic system had to discriminate temporal reference (past or future) of verbs and adverbs (referring to either past or future) auditorily presented to either the left or right ear by pressing a left or a right key. Spanish participants were faster responding to past words with the left hand and to future words with the right hand, whereas Hebrew participants showed the opposite pattern. Our results demonstrate that the left-right mapping of time is not restricted to the visual modality and that the direction of reading accounts for the preferred directionality of the mental time line. These results are discussed in the context of a possible mechanism underlying the effects of reading direction on highly abstract conceptual representations.

Priming the mental time-line: effects of modality and processing mode

“…This result is in line with the facilitation of timespace congruent responses by auditorily presented words reported by Ouellet et al (2010b). Most importantly, however, the words employed in the present study have the ability to prime the mental time-line.…”

“…Whereas some studies reported a time-space congruency effect evoked by auditory words (Kong and You 2012;Lakens et al 2011; see also Ishihara et al 2008 for a spatio-temporal compatibility effect with non-word auditory stimuli), Ouellet et al (2010b) did not find an interaction between the left and right stimulus location and the past and future references. Since such an interaction had been repeatedly demonstrated for visual stimuli (e.g., Santiago et al 2007;Torralbo et al 2006), Ouellet et al (2010b) provides some indication of the involvement of modalityspecific processes in the activation of the mental time-line. Recently, Santiago et al (2011) proposed a working memory based theory which captures the influence of task demands and modality-specific processes on the activation of spatial codes by temporal codes.…”

Space and time in the sighted and blind

“…The use of an external FoR for representing temporal order is consistent with the hypothesis that the direction of the MTL depends on orthographic experience (Casasanto & Bottini, 2014;Fuhrman & Boroditsky, 2010;Ouellet et al, 2010). Reading text from left to right, whether with the eyes or the hands, leads to a similar horizontal representation of temporal order in which earlier times are located to the left of later times, independent of the position of one's hands.…”

“…The experience of reading and writing seems to play a role in establishing the direction and orientation of the MTL (Casasanto & Bottini, 2014;Fuhrman & Boroditsky, 2010;Ouellet, Santiago, Israeli & Gabay, 2010;Tversky, Kugelmass & Winter, 1991). Events unfold rightward along the MTL in people who habitually read from left to right, and leftward in people who read from right to left (e.g.…”

“…Events unfold rightward along the MTL in people who habitually read from left to right, and leftward in people who read from right to left (e.g. Israeli Hebrew-speakers; Fuhrman & Boroditsky, 2010;Ouellet et al 2010). Beyond showing a correlation between reading direction and the MTL, a training experiment demonstrated a causal role for reading experience in determining which direction time flows in people's minds.…”