Mental Representations of Time in English Monolinguals, Mandarin Monolinguals, and Mandarin–English Bilinguals

Abstract

This study recruited English monolinguals, Mandarin monolinguals, and Mandarin–English (ME) bilinguals to examine whether native English and native Mandarin speakers think about time differently and whether the acquisition of L2 English could reshape native Mandarin speakers’ mental representations of temporal sequence. Across two experiments, we used the temporal congruency categorization paradigm which involved two-alternative forced-choice reaction time tasks to contrast experimental conditions that were assumed to be either compatible or incompatible with the internal spatiotemporal associations. Results add to previous studies by confirming that native English and native Mandarin speakers do think about time differently, and the significant crosslinguistic discrepancy primarily lies in the vertical representations of time flow. However, current findings also clarify the existing literature, demonstrating that the acquisition of L2 English does not appear to affect native Mandarin speakers’ temporal cognition. ME bilinguals, irrespective of whether they attained elementary or advanced level of English proficiency, exhibited temporal thinking patterns commensurate with those of Mandarin monolinguals. Some theoretical implications regarding the effect of bilingualism on cognition in general can be drawn from the present study, a crucial one being that it provides evidence against the view that L2 acquisition can reshape habitual modes of thinking established by L1.

Spice up the moment: The influence of spicy taste on people's metaphorical perspectives on time

“…(Li, 2020). ” Previous study using the literally translated paradigm that retains the adverb “forward” found that Mandarin monolinguals unanimously preferred the time-moving perspective and answered “Wednesday” (Lai & Boroditsky, 2013), an indication of the lack of ambiguity of the experimental question as Chinese speakers may habitually identify “ 前 ( forward )” with temporal events being moved closer to where they are, evident in conventional phrases such as “ 提前 ( carry front: bring to an earlier time)” (Li & Cao, 2020). This adverb-clipped probe, by eliminating the tendentious direction of movement, has been tried and tested in published studies with proven ambiguity among Mandarin Chinese speakers (Li & Cao, 2020; Zheng et al, 2019).…”

Cognitive restructuring: Psychophysical measurement of time perception in bilinguals

“…Language proficiency has also been shown to be a significant factor in predicting bilingual speakers' temporal perspective. Based on the observation that, contrary to English, time-moving metaphors in Mandarin ('the deadline is approaching') are more frequent than ego-moving metaphors ('we are approaching the deadline'), Lai and Boroditsky (2013) asked participants questions where the answer required adopting either a time-moving or an egomoving perspective. Their results showed that English speakers were indeed more likely to adopt the Ego-moving perspective than were Mandarin speakers, and furthermore that bilinguals' temporal perspective was predicted by language proficiency, such that those who were more proficient in Mandarin were less likely to take an ego-moving perspective, and those who were more proficient in English were more likely to adopt such a perspective.…”

“…One other reason may be that the bilingual samples tested do not show requisite variability in their L2 proficiency to render any correlation, regression, or factorial analysis significant. For instance, Lai and Boroditsky (2013) investigated the impact of horizontal and vertical metaphors on temporal sequencing in Mandarin-English bilinguals. Consistent with Mandarin, which adopts a vertical system for sequencing events, Mandarin-English bilinguals placed future events below and past events above more frequently when tested in Taiwan than in the USA, demonstrating a robust effect of experimental context.…”

Does the congenital blind have space-time mapping on the sagittal axis?

“…Furthermore, the metaphors we used to talk about time have immediate and long-term consequences on how we conceptualize time. Mandarin speakers are more likely to construct a sagittal mental timeline when understanding front-back metaphors, and more likely to construct a vertical mental timeline when understanding up-down metaphors (Lai & Boroditsky, 2013).…”