Representational Mode Of The Vertical Spatial Metaphor Of Moral Concepts

The traditional propositional symbol representation consider that conceptual representation take the abstract symbol as the main body, which has nothing to do with the body,and cognition and perception as two independent systems.Under the background of embodied cognition theory, the perceptual symbol theory proposed by Barsalou(1999), argues that human cognitive and perceptual system is not independent, but mutual restriction, the concept of representation is based on individual perception experience, and plays an important role.However, perceptual symbol theory cannot well explain the representation of abstract concept,which has no perceptual state information.This shows propositional symbol representation and perceptual symbol representation coexist in the conceptual system, perceptual symbol representation processing information Perceptual symbol representation process information related to the individual experience, and propositional symbol representation process information has nothing to do with the individual experience. This theory provides the basis for the representation mechanism of vertical spatial metaphor of moral concepts.In this study, we explores the exists of propositional symbol representation and perception symbolic representation in the vertical spatial metaphor of moral concepts,and the time when they come up. Purpose of experiment one is to examine the exists of perception symbolic representation and its time. Participants were asked to judge if the words present on the screen has the opposite meaning between them or not, the results show that when the first word of the pairs of words presented for 300 ms,the judging time of which has the matched position is clearly shorter than the time of which pairs of words don’t have the matched position with their metaphor spatial position. The results confirmed the existence of the perceptual symbol representation, and it come up at 300 ms. Purpose of experiment 2 is to examine the exists of propositional symbolic representation and its time. Participants were asked to judge if the words present on the screen has the matched position with their spatial metaphor position, the results show that when the first word of the pairs of words presented for 150 ms, the judging time of which has the opposite meaning is clearly shorter than the time of which pairs of words don’t have the opposite meaning. The results confirmed the existence of the propositional symbol representation, and it come up at 150 ms.The research shows that in the process of moral concept vertical space metaphor, both exist propositional symbol representation, there is also perception symbolic representation. Propositional symbol representation appeared in the early period(150 ms), and perceptual symbol representation appeared in the late period(300 ms).