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Joint spatial-temporal association of response codes (STEARC) effect: Mental timelines embodied interpersonally
Weicong Ren1, Xiujuan Guo1, Fusui Wang1
1Department of Psychology, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang, China.
Psych Journal
|November 21, 2023
Summary
Social interactions influence our perception of time. When working together, people show a bias, mentally mapping past events to their left and future events to their right, suggesting shared mental timelines.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Social Neuroscience
- Human-Computer Interaction
Background:
- Temporal judgments are fundamental cognitive processes.
- Social interactions can modulate various cognitive functions, including perception and decision-making.
- Understanding how social contexts affect time perception is crucial for explaining human behavior.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of social interactions on temporal judgments.
- To compare performance in co-action (joint) versus individual task conditions.
- To explore the potential existence of a spatial mapping for time in social contexts.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a co-action task paradigm with participants responding to time-related words (e.g., 'yesterday', 'tomorrow').
- Conducted two experiments comparing individual and joint task conditions, with varying proximity and display setups.
- Measured participants' response times to past- and future-related words.
Main Results:
- No significant difference in response times for past- and future-related words in individual conditions.
- In joint conditions, participants responded faster to past-time words presented on the left compared to future-time words.
- This indicates a left-to-right spatial mapping for time (past-left, future-right) emerging during social interaction.
Conclusions:
- Social interactions facilitate a shared mental representation of time.
- Data support a specific spatial-temporal mapping: past on the left, future on the right.
- Cooperating individuals appear to synchronize their mental timelines, influencing temporal judgments.
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