Priming the mental time line

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance
Maria Grazia Di BonoMarco Zorzi

Abstract

Growing experimental evidence suggests that temporal events are represented on a mental time line, spatially oriented from left to right. Support for the spatial representation of time comes mostly from studies that have used spatially organized responses. Moreover, many of these studies did not avoid possible confounds attributable to target stimuli that simultaneously convey both spatial and temporal dimensions. Here we show that task-irrelevant, lateralized visuospatial primes affect auditory duration judgments. Responses to short durations were faster when the auditory target was paired with left- than with right-sided primes, whereas responses to long durations were faster when paired with right- than with left-sided primes. Thus, when the representations of physical space and time are concurrently activated, physical space may influence time even when a lateralized, spatially encoded response is not required by the task. The time-space interaction reported here cannot be ascribed to any Spatial-Temporal Association of Response Codes effect. It supports the hypothesis that the representation of time is spatially organized, with short durations represented on the left space and longer ones on the right.

Citations

Mar 14, 2013·PloS One·Kevin J Holmes, Stella F Lourenco
Aug 2, 2013·Attention, Perception & Psychophysics·Marco FabbriVincenzo Natale
Sep 1, 2012·Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews·Mario BonatoCarlo Umiltà
Mar 15, 2015·Frontiers in Psychology·Xianfeng DingZhao Fan
Jun 12, 2014·Frontiers in Psychology·Mario Bonato, Carlo Umiltà
Jul 26, 2018·Frontiers in Psychology·Jennifer T CoullSylvie Droit-Volet
Jan 24, 2020·Frontiers in Psychology·Maria Grazia Di BonoKonstantinos Priftis
May 25, 2018·The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology : QJEP·Kiyofumi Miyoshi, Hiroshi Ashida
Jul 31, 2021·Psychological Research·Vanja TopićDražen Domijan

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