On - Image Schema Of Vertical Space Metaphorical Expressions To Understand The Experimental Study

Lakoff has proposed that the spatial concept is one of the most important domains underlying our thinking of the abstract ones. The spatial metaphor based on the metaphorical mapping of image-schema, from the source domain (ie: space) to other non spatial domains, give such concepts a direction.'Among spatial metaphors exist a sort of cognitive method which is mapping from "up-down" conceptual domain to other target domains, which is named vertical spatial metaphor. Some researchers have found that people always use such spatial terms — 'up-down' to talk about various abstract domains(eg: state, quantity, social status, time ), and they are vertical spatial metaphoric expression. Suppose that 'up' is always related to the good, while 'down' is always related to the bad. The reasoning of such kind of linguistic evidences is that the 'up-down' image schema, does exist in our conceptual system. The job of the 'up-down' image schema is to provide such structure to an abstract domain. Thus, the hypothesis is if the 'up-down' image schema is accessible and then makes effect on reading task, it has psychological reality.The participants we chose included infants from kindergarten middle class, students from grade three of elementary school, grade seven of junior high and grade one of senior high, considering thinking levels. Two experiments were designed to test the hypothesis we proposed. Participants in experiment 1 are school age students. Ask them to read some paragraphs describing arrangements that conform to the 'up-down' image schema or not. The result is that sentences describing arrangements that are consistent with the 'up-down' image schema were read and judged more quickly than sentences describing arrangements that are inconsistent with the 'up-down' image schema.Participants in experiment 2 were pre-school age infants. Let them place twin objects according to the up-down order, and explain why they made such arrangements. The answers showed that children inclined to put positive ones up, but not the negatives.In conclusion, the up-down image schema of vertical spatial metaphor do exist in our concept system, and even in infants from kindergarten middle class. So, it's important and radical for us to organize and comprehend abstract concepts via mapping of image schema. Moreover, it's necessary to use cognitive mode of vertical spatial metaphor to comprehend abstract ones such as states, quantity, social status and time.