Mental representation of autobiographical memories along the sagittal mental timeline: Evidence from spatiotemporal interference

Abstract

Time is usually conceived of in terms of space: many natural languages refer to time according to a back-to-front axis. Indeed, whereas the past is usually conceived to be “behind us”, the future is considered to be “in front of us.” Despite temporal coding is pivotal for the development of autonoetic consciousness, little is known about the organization of autobiographical memories along this axis. Here we developed a spatial compatibility task (SCT) to test the organization of autobiographical memories along the sagittal plane, using spatiotemporal interference. Twenty-one participants were asked to recall both episodic and semantic autobiographical memories (EAM and SAM, respectively) to be used in the SCT. Then, during the SCT, they were asked to decide whether each event occurred before or after the event presented right before, using a response code that could be compatible with the back-to-front axis (future in front) or not (future at back). We found that performance was significantly worse during the non-compatible condition, especially for EAM. The results are discussed in light of the evidence for spatiotemporal encoding of episodic autobiographical memories, taking into account possible mechanisms explaining compatibility effects.

A pilot study of how the past, present, and future are represented in three-dimensional space

“…Cross-linguistic studies have indicated that the earlier timing tends to be associated with the words meaning “front” and the later timing tends to be associated with the words meaning “behind” ( Moore, 2011 ) although the spatial representation of the time frames of the past, present, and future could be varied in different languages and contexts ( Yang et al, 2023 ). Psychometric studies have shown that response time decreases when the time-related cue and the sagittal position of the hand to respond ( Walker et al, 2017 ), the arrow key to press ( Teghil et al, 2021 ), or the back or forward direction of whole-body motion ( Hartmann and Mast, 2012 ) is congruent. It remains unclear what information is expressed using each horizontal, vertical, or sagittal axis and combinations of the three axes.…”

Mapping of individual time units in horizontal space

“…The sagittal axis represents the spatial dimension most often revealed by space-time metaphors (Núñez & Cooperrider, 2013) with the agent being at the "now" point, future concepts in the forward, and past concepts in the backward space. Indeed, speakers of different languages (with some culture-based exceptions; Núñez & Sweetser, 2006) associate future/past events with forward/backward orientation and motion (Boroditsky, 2000(Boroditsky, , 2018Teghil et al, 2021). For instance, reaction times (RTs) are reduced if participants use a front-oriented response key when classifying future events and a backoriented response key when classifying past events (Teghil et al, 2021).…”

“…Indeed, speakers of different languages (with some culture-based exceptions; Núñez & Sweetser, 2006) associate future/past events with forward/backward orientation and motion (Boroditsky, 2000(Boroditsky, , 2018Teghil et al, 2021). For instance, reaction times (RTs) are reduced if participants use a front-oriented response key when classifying future events and a backoriented response key when classifying past events (Teghil et al, 2021). Such sagittal axis dominance may reflect the fact that horizontal and vertical axes need to be perceptually "projected" while the sagittal axis is experienced directly by regularly moving forward in space.…”