Space and Time are Mutually Contagious in Sound

Space and Time are Mutually Contagious in Sound Alexander Kranjec (kranjeca@duq.edu) Psychology Department, Duquesne University Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA, USA Matthew Lehet (mil@andrew.cmu.edu) Psychology Department, Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA, USA Anjan Chatterjee (anjan@mail.med.upenn.edu) Neurology Department and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA, USA Abstract because as we walk forward, objects we pass begin to occupy the unseen space behind our bodies becoming accessible only to memory as part of a temporal past. Experimental studies support the idea that the ways in which we experience space play a role in structuring the semantics of time (Boroditsky, 2000, 2001; Boroditsky & Ramscar, 2002; Casasanto & Boroditsky, 2008; Kranjec, Cardillo, Schmidt, & Chatterjee, 2010; Kranjec & McDonough, 2011; Matlock, Ramscar, & Boroditsky, 2005; Miles, Nind, & Macrae, 2010; Nunez, Motz, & Teuschner, 2006; Nunez & Sweetser, 2006; Torralbo, Santiago, & Lupianez, 2006). Time is talked about in terms of space more frequently than the opposite is true. Past experimental evidence suggests that this asymmetry runs deep, with results suggesting that temporal concepts and percepts find structure in spatial representations but not vice versa. However, these studies frequently involve verbal and/or visual stimuli. Because vision makes a privileged contribution to spatial processing it is unclear whether these results speak to a deep asymmetry between time and space, or a modality specific one. The present study was motivated by this ambiguity and a complementary correspondence between audition and temporal processing. In an auditory perceptual task, duration and spatial displacement judgments were shown to be mutually contagious. Irrelevant temporal information influenced spatial judgments and vice versa with a larger effect of time on space. The results suggest that the perceptual asymmetry between domains does not generalize across modalities and that time is not fundamentally more abstract than space. In language, time−space relations are relatively asymmetrical. Not only is time talked about in spatial terms much more frequently than space is talked about in terms of time, but in many ways time must be talked about using the language of space, whereas the opposite is not true. These linguistic patterns have been interpreted to suggest a deeper conceptual organization. According to conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999) we think about relatively abstract target domains (like time) in terms of more concrete source domains (like space). This basic organizational principle is purported to serve the functional role of making more abstract concepts easier to talk and think about. It is argued that we depend on such a hierarchy because, for example, we can directly see and touch things “in space” in a way that we cannot “in time. ” This suggests that thinking about time in terms of space runs cognitively deep, and reflects a mental organization more fundamental than that observed at the relatively superficial level of words. Keywords: space and time; language and thought; metaphor; embodiment Introduction Time is frequently talked about using the language of space (Clark, 1973; Hasplemath, 1997; Tenbrink, 2007). Events can be long or short, and can occupy a place that is either behind or in front of us in time. Space is used to talk about time not only frequently but also meaningfully. We talk about temporal extent or duration in terms of distance, and the past and future in egocentric locational terms. These ways of talking and thinking about space and time are thought to reflect something about how we experience these domains together. We may talk about duration in terms of length because it takes more time to visually scan or travel through more extended space, and the past as behind In a widely cited paper, Casasanto and Boroditsky (2008) sought strong experimental evidence for this theoretical organizational principle. Specifically, they wanted to know if the asymmetry of space-time metaphors in language predicted a similar asymmetry in perception. They reasoned