How We Think about Temporal Words: A Gestural Priming Study in English and Chinese.

ABSTRACT: Spatial metaphors are used to represent and reason about time. Such metaphors are typically arranged along the sagittal axis in most languages. For example, in English, "The future lies ahead of us" and "We look back on our past." This is less straightforward for Chinese. Specifically, both the past and future can either be behind or ahead. The present study aims to explore these cross-linguistic differences by priming auditory targets (e.g., tomorrow) with either a congruent (i.e., pointing forwards) or incongruent (i.e., pointing backwards) gesture. Two groups of college-age young adult participants (English and Chinese speakers) made temporal classifications of words after watching a gestural prime. If speakers represent time along the sagittal axis, they should respond faster if the au

SUBMITTER: Ng MMR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5477416 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature