Mirror reading can reverse the flow of time.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Linguistics
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Cultural conceptualizations of time often align with horizontal timelines, but directionality varies across cultures.
• Previous research suggests cultural and linguistic factors influence mental time representations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if reading experience can independently shape the direction and orientation of mental timelines.
• To explore the causal role of orthography in forming implicit time representations.

Main Methods:

• Dutch speakers completed space-time congruity tasks using standard, mirror-reversed, or rotated orthography.
• Reaction times were measured to assess mental timeline direction and orientation.

Main Results:

• Standard orthography use correlated with a rightward-directed mental timeline.
• Brief exposure to mirror-reversed orthography reversed participants' mental timelines.
• Rotated orthography (90° clockwise or counterclockwise) led to corresponding rotations in mental timelines.

Conclusions:

• Reading experience causally influences the direction and orientation of mental time representations.
• Exposure to new orthographies can rapidly alter mental timelines, even contradicting established mappings.
• The hierarchical mental metaphors theory proposes that space-time mappings are conditioned by physical world relationships.