The Spatial Characterization Of Middle School Students' Time

Research on numerical and spatial relationships, we found that there is a space-numericaljoint coding (spatial-numerical association of response codes, SNARC) effect, left hand havefaster speed to the smaller number, while right hand faster speed to the, namely the brain has amental number line from left to right. On this basis, people have explored the relationship oftime and space, founding STEARC effect which similar to the SNARC effect, past on the left,future on the right, namely the brain has a mental time line from left to right.Choosing the middle school students who have the Chinese culture as the mostly subjects, wedesigned two experiments: Experiment1, following the Boroditsky (2010)“putting time point inthe three-dimensional space” task, we examined the college students and middle school studentsof the Chinese culture. The results showed that:(1) in the three-dimensional space, participantscharacterization of time is similar to the space coordinate axis, include the left-right axle,front-back axle, and the up-down axle. In general, time representation more inclined to left-rightcharacterization, accounting for60.2%of the total, followed by the front-back characterization,accounting for25.3%of the total, up-down characterization is account for14.5%of the total.(2)college students put time mainly on the left-right axle, accounting for45.8%of the grade. Highschool students put time mainly on the up-down axle, accounting for41.7%of the grade; Juniorhigh school students put time mainly on the left-right axle, accounting for39.0%of the grade.(3)the orientation features of the time representation: college students, high school and juniorhigh school students have significant differences on question2(August/September/October),2=25.430，p<0.01; also have differences on question3(past/present/future),2=18.954，p<0.05, but no difference on question1(yesterday/today/tomorrow),2=15.738，p>0.05.(4) thedistance features of the time representation:51%of participants thought past and future have theequal distance to now. Analysis on the interaction of different grade and time distance found inthe table: more college student groups think “now” near “future”, greater number than the highschool students.Experiment2has the high school students of the Chinese culture as subjects. Based on thethree attributes of time information: interval estimation, timing information and temporal order judgment, we explore the further research of STEARC effect. On the one hand, investigate thepsychological realism of space-time characterization under the three kinds of experimentalmaterials, on the other hand do a further test in the laboratory environment about experiment1.Results show that:(1) in the experiment of interval estimation materials, when the targetstimulus is a short distance, the subjects’ left hand reaction more quickly than the right, while thetarget stimulus is a long distance, the subjects’ right hand reaction more quickly than left.(2) inthe experiment of timing information materials, when the target stimuli presented pointinformation in the visual channel, for the past meaning word, high school students use left keyreact faster than the right key, for the future meaning word, they use right key react faster thanthe left key, which showed there is STEARC effect; Using auditory channel present pointinformation, also appeared STEARC effect, but there is no significant difference between them(F=2.248, p>2.248).(3) in the experiment of temporal order judgment materials, when the cluetips consistent with the STEARC effect, the reaction time is faster than the circumstance ofinconsistent; No clue tips and clue tips has no significant difference between the promptresponse.