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Writing direction and language activation affect how Arabic-English bilingual speakers map time onto space
Juana Park1, Christina L Gagné2, Thomas L Spalding2
1Department of Psychology, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
Frontiers in Psychology
|February 8, 2024
Summary
Bilingual speakers
Area of Science:
- Cognitive psychology
- Linguistics
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Language influences spatial cognition.
- Writing direction may impact abstract conceptualization.
- Bilingualism offers a unique lens to study these effects.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the influence of writing direction and language activation on the spatial mapping of time in Arabic-English bilinguals.
- To determine if testing language (Arabic: right-to-left, English: left-to-right) affects temporal-spatial arrangements.
Main Methods:
- Participants: Arabic-English bilinguals.
- Task: Arranging story cards chronologically.
- Procedure: Tested in either Arabic or English to assess language activation effects on spatial time mapping.
Main Results:
- Arabic-tested bilinguals showed a significant tendency towards right-to-left spatial arrangements.
- English-tested bilinguals did not exhibit the same right-to-left bias.
- Writing directionality demonstrably influenced participants' spatial conceptualization of time.
Conclusions:
- Language activation, specifically writing direction, plays a significant role in shaping the spatial representation of time for bilingual individuals.
- The findings support the linguistic relativity hypothesis, suggesting language influences thought.
- Future research should explore other language pairs and cognitive domains.
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