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Published on: October 13, 2018
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Language and the Construction of Time through Space.
1University of California, San Diego, CA, USA.
Trends in Neurosciences
|October 3, 2018
Summary
Language shapes our perception of time. Learning new spatial metaphors in language can alter how we mentally represent and understand timelines, showing language
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Linguistics
- Psychology
Background:
- Cross-linguistic research indicates that spatial metaphors influence temporal cognition.
- Existing theories suggest a link between language structure and abstract thought processes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the causal role of language, specifically spatial metaphors, in shaping non-linguistic representations of time.
- To explore how learning new linguistic metaphors can induce changes in mental timelines.
Main Methods:
- Comparative analysis of temporal cognition across speakers of different languages.
- Experimental manipulation involving the learning of novel spatial metaphors.
- Assessment of non-linguistic temporal representations before and after linguistic intervention.
Main Results:
- Significant differences in temporal reasoning were observed, correlating with the spatial metaphors prevalent in participants' native languages.
- Learning new spatial metaphors led to measurable shifts in participants' non-linguistic mental timelines.
- Evidence suggests a direct causal link between linguistic input and the construction of temporal representations.
Conclusions:
- Language, through its inherent spatial metaphors, actively constructs how individuals conceptualize and represent time.
- The findings support the linguistic relativity hypothesis, demonstrating language's causal influence on abstract cognition.
- Interventions involving language learning could potentially modify abstract cognitive frameworks, such as the mental timeline.
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