Later events lie behind her, but not behind you: Compatibility effects for temporal sequences along the sagittal axis depend on perspective

Later events lie behind her, but not behind you: Compatibility effects for temporal sequences along the sagittal axis depend on perspective Esther J. Walker (e1walker@cogsci.ucsd.edu) Benjamin K. Bergen (bkbergen@cogsci.ucsd.edu) Rafael Nunez (nunez@cogsci.ucsd.edu) Department of Cognitive Science, 9500 Gilman Dr. University of California, San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093-0515 USA Abstract Perspective plays a large role in how we think about space. Does perspective also influence how we think about abstract concepts, such as time, which have been shown to be closely associated with how we think about space? Linguistic patterns suggest that speakers talk about temporal sequences from two perspectives: field-based and ego perspective (Moore, 2011). However, the psychological reality of these mappings beyond their use in language is unclear. The present study examines whether sequential reasoning recruits the sagittal (front-back) axis differently, depending on the perspective adopted for the task. We manipulated perspective by using pronouns meant to evoke a field-based or ego perspective (“her” vs “your” high school graduation, respectively). Participants made earlier- than or later-than judgments about event sequences using a mouse in front of or behind their body. We observed an interaction between pronoun, temporal reference, and response location. Participants map space onto time differently depending on the frame of reference from which temporal sequences are interpreted. Keywords: spatial construals of time; perspective; pronouns; compatibility effects; sequence time Introductions Spatial perspective plays an important role in how people think about and comprehend the world around them (e.g., Tversky, 2003, 2005) and humans are quite flexible in the spatial perspectives they are able to adopt. Indeed, individuals are not only able to think about and interpret scenes from their own perspective, but are also able to adapt their perspective to that of another person (Tversky & Hard, 2009). Furthermore, language can also influence the perspective from which one interprets a scene. For example, the use of a single pronoun influences the perspective from which readers simulate actions described in narratives (Brunye, Ditman, Mahoney, Augustyn, & Taylor, 2009). Brunye et al. (2009) demonstrated that when participants read sentences such as “You are cutting the tomato” versus “He is cutting the tomato”, they were faster to match the sentence to the corresponding picture if the pronoun matched the spatial perspective from which the picture was taken. As such, it appears that one’s embodied simulation of actions in the world is sensitive to the perspective from which those actions are described. However, is it also the case that the use of different pronouns influences the perspective from which one thinks about more abstract concepts, which have been suggested to obtain their conceptual structure from our embodied experience of moving through and interacting with the world around us (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson, 1980)? One candidate that may help provide insight into such a question is time—the conceptualization of which appears tightly tied to how we think about space. Across the world's languages, people use space to talk about time. Nevertheless, there's diversity in precisely how languages spatialize time—what axis they use, and how they map time onto that axis (Clark, 1973; Haspelmath, 1997; Nunez & Sweetser, 2006). Moreover, the use of space to structure time isn't merely a matter of language, it's also a matter of thought—a large literature suggests that conceptualizations of time are also strongly linked to thought about space (e.g., Casasanto & Boroditsky, 2008). Indeed, from linguists to philosophers to psychologists, scholars have discussed at length the ways in which time recruits spatial structure. This research has produced a large body of findings in language (Clark, 1973; Traugott, 1975; Moore, 2006; 2011), gesture (Cooperrider & Nunez, 2009; Casasanto & Jasmin, 2012), and psychological experiments (Santiago et al., 2007; Torralbo et al., 2007; Weger & Pratt, 2008; Ouellet et al., 2010). Scholars have long noted that there exist at least two distinct spatial construals of time: deictic and sequence (McTaggart, 1908; Nunez & Sweetser, 2006). Deictic time conceptualization reflects past/future relationships and centers around the present moment, or now, as a reference point. Sequence time, on the other hand, does not use “now” as a reference point. Instead, one event becomes the reference point for another event, capturing “earlier” or “later” relationships in time. Experimental research on this topic has often overlooked this distinction, pooling deictic with sequential judgments, but because the two types of time judgment relate to space differently (Casasanto & Jasmin, 2012; Walker, Bergen, & Nunez, 2013), the present study will focus only on sequence time. Sequence time has been shown to recruit the transversal (left-right) axis in a systematic manner. In gesture, English speakers often sweep their hand to their left when talking about earlier events and to the right when talking about later events (Cooperrider & Nunez, 2009; Casasanto & Jasmin, 2012). Furthermore, space-time compatibility effects are widely reported for this axis in a variety of languages (e.g., in Spanish: Santiago, Lupianez, Perez, & Funes, 2007; in