A Comparative Study Of Chinese And English Speakers’ Spatial Representations Of Time

Spatial representation of time is widely acknowledged to be a cognitive universal.Nevertheless, the specific spatial models people construct for time may differ acrosslanguages and cultures. In particular, empirical studies show that temporalrepresentation is closely correlated with linguistic (e.g. metaphor) and cultural (e.g.writing/reading) experience. A growing body of comparative studies has beenconducted on Chinese and English speakers’ spatial construals of time as the twolanguages exhibit an interesting difference in the metaphorical expression of time.Chinese speakers talk about time vertically more often than English speakers. It is thushypothesized that Chinese speakers are more likely than English speakers to think abouttime vertically. Another interesting finding from recent studies is that writing/readingdirection appears to exert influence on temporal cognition. Since both Chinese andEnglish speakers write and read from left to right, it is thus hypothesized that they areboth likely to mentally arrange time in a left-to-right fashion.In this study, we test the psychological reality of spatial representation of time andexamine the relationship between temporal cognition and linguistic metaphor andwriting/reading direction. In particular, we ask the following questions:(1) whetherChinese speakers are more likely than English speakers to construct verticalrepresentation of time;(2) whether Chinese and English speakers have left-to-rightrepresentation for time. To answer these questions, a new experimental paradigm isconstructed. In each trial, participants see two pictures presented one after the other on acomputer screen; their task is to judge whether the second picture depicts an earlier orlater time point than the first one. They are instructed to respond as fast and accuratelyas possible by single or double pressing a designated key. Reaction times are recordedby the computer and up to millisecond precision. Irrelevant to the task but of centralinterest to this study is the display position of the second picture. The first picture isalways displayed in the center of the screen; the second picture may appear to theleft/right or top/bottom of the first one. The results show that Chinese speakers respondfaster when earlier pictures are to the top than to the bottom while English speakersrespond equally fast in the two conditions. This demonstrates that only Chinese speakers construct vertical representation of time, as is predicted by the patterns inlinguistic metaphor. As for the horizontal axis, both Chinese and English speakersrespond faster when earlier pictures appear to the left than to the right. This serves asevidence for the mental representation of time in a left-to-right fashion, which isconsistent with the writing/reading direction of the two languages.Combined with previous studies, these findings indicate the influence of linguisticmetaphor and writing/reading direction on temporal cognition. More importantly, theycan be used as evidence to support general theories and claims beyond temporalrepresentation. To begin with, the study attests to the psychological reality ofmetaphorical thinking. In addition, the findings serve as further evidence for the claimthat thought (at least in some conceptual domains) is influenced by but not dependenton language. Practically, the identification of similarities and differences betweenChinese and English speakers’ temporal cognition can facilitate cross-culturalcommunication and enhance mutual understanding.