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Eye Movements in Visual Duration Perception: Disentangling Stimulus from Time in Predecisional Processes

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Time in the mind: using space to think about time.

Daniel Casasanto¹, Lera Boroditsky

¹Department of Psychology, Jordan Hall, Bldg 420, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. casasan@stanford.edu

|May 19, 2007

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Mental representations of abstract concepts like time may stem from physical experiences. Spatial information influences duration judgments, suggesting a link between our basic sensory perceptions and abstract thought.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Science
Psychology
Linguistics

Background:

Abstract concepts are fundamental to human cognition.
The relationship between abstract thought and physical experience is a key area of research.
Linguistic metaphors often link abstract concepts (e.g., time) to concrete domains (e.g., space).

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if physical experiences, specifically spatial representations, underlie abstract mental representations of time.
To determine if the spatial-temporal asymmetry observed in language reflects underlying cognitive processes.
To explore the role of perception and motor action in forming abstract mental representations.

Main Methods:

Six psychophysical experiments were conducted.
Participants performed tasks involving judgments of duration and spatial information.
Tasks were designed to minimize linguistic stimuli and responses to isolate non-linguistic processing.

Main Results:

People could not ignore irrelevant spatial information when judging duration.
Conversely, spatial judgments were not affected by irrelevant temporal information.
This asymmetry mirrors the pattern found in linguistic metaphors of time and space.

Conclusions:

The metaphorical relationship between space and time in language appears to reflect basic representational processes.
Findings suggest that abstract mental representations are, in part, built upon physical experiences in perception and motor action.
This provides evidence for embodied cognition, where abstract thought is grounded in sensory and motor systems.