Baseline Explorations in the Spatial Construal of Time

Baseline Explorations in the Spatial Construal of Time Benjamin A. Motz (bmotz@cogsci.ucsd.edu) Rafael E. Nunez (nunez@cogsci.ucsd.edu) Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA 92093-0515 Introduction Due in part to theoretical advances in cognitive linguistics (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Nunez, 1999) and recent studies in cognitive psychology (Boroditsky, 2000; Gentner, 2001), it has become well accepted that humans apply spatial principles to their conception of time. Statements such as, “Cogsci 2004 has arrived,” reflect a mental model in which temporal abstractions are given meaning via spatial metaphors. Examining these metaphors, Boroditsky (2000) used spatial priming to influence subjects’ interpretation of “forward” (as earlier or later) when disambiguating the meaning of Move the meeting forward. She reported the baseline interpretation of “forward” to be “about evenly split” (p. 9) between earlier (45.7%) and later (54.3%) when subjects received no priming. As part of a larger research project, the present report focuses on these baseline interpretations. In order to standardize the responses and improve replicability, subjects were shown a graphic display with no reference to objects moving toward an observer, or an observer moving toward objects—the two situations widely believed to exclusively influence conceptual models when disambiguating the meaning of “forward” (Gentner, 2001). Methods 66 undergraduate students at the University of California, San Diego participated in the study as part of their course requirements. Subjects were shown a static display of five stationary colored boxes. Two of the boxes contained balls; the others were empty. During this presentation, subjects were asked to respond to five questions, including: What is the color of the box containing the black ball? and How many boxes are in the display? Immediately following these presentations, subjects were instructed to turn to subsequent pages in their questionnaires containing the following two target questions, the order of which was balanced across subjects. Next Wednesday’s meeting has been moved forward two days. On what day will the meeting now take place? Tomorrow’s 12:00 (noon) meeting has been moved forward two hours. At what time will the meeting now take place? Results and Discussion Subjects’ responses to the target question are shown in Table 1. Chi-square analyses indicated that responses are significantly different from those expected by chance when the question on the scale of days is asked first (p < 0.005). This is not the case when preceded by the question on the scale of hours. Table 1: Number of responses by order of target questions. Monday Friday 10:00am 2:00pm Day then Hour Hour then Day It is widely believed that time is construed specifically in terms of observers and motion (Gentner, 2001). Our methodology, which bore no explicit reference to such concepts, elicited responses significantly different from those expected by chance. Furthermore, this difference is sensitive to the time scale of the target question. These findings suggest that the specific spatial metaphors for time are more complex than previously assumed. The data in the upper left cells of Table 1, which are analogous to Boroditsky’s (2000) baseline data, can hardly be interpreted as “about evenly split. ” This suggests that there may be many pragmatic constraints to be considered and that there are more complex variations of conceptual mappings from space to time. Without making claims as to exact baseline responses to ambiguous questions about time, the present findings suggest a reconsideration of what is necessary and sufficient to elicit priming effects in the spatial construal of time. Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to Ursina Teuscher for her helpful comments and involvement. References Boroditsky, L. (2000). Metaphoric structuring: Understanding time through spatial metaphors. Cognition, Gentner, D. (2001). Spatial metaphors in temporal reasoning. In M. Gattis (Ed.) Spatial Schemas and Abstract Thought (Chapter 8, pp. 203-222). Cambridge: MIT Press. Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nunez, R. (1999). Could the future taste purple? Journal of Consiousness Studies, 6, 41-60.