Abstract
Three experiments investigated the mental representation of meaningful event sequences. Experiment 1 used extended (5 min long) naturalistic scenes excerpted from commercial movies. Experiments 2 and 3 presented everyday activities by means of sequences of six photographs. All experiments found both left–right and distance effects in an order decision task, suggesting that when contemplated in hindsight, experienced events unfold along a left-to-right analogical mental line. Present results are discussed in the context of the mental representation of other kinds of ordinal sequences, and other left–right effects reported in non-ordinal domains.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The counterbalancing factor was not included in the design. Although there could be interactions with this factor, they would be of no theoretical value. Counterbalancing assures that order-practice effects are controlled for. Sometimes it is useful to include it as a factor in the analyses to take off some error variance and improve the power of the analysis, but it is not necessary in the present experiments, as all ANOVAs already provide significant results for the factors of interest.
References
Altmann, L. J. P., Saleem, A., Kendall, D., Heilman, K. M., & Rothi, L. J. G. (2006). Orthographic directionality and thematic role illustration in English and Arabic. Brain and Language, 97, 306–316.
Barrett, A. M., Kim, M., Crucian, G. P., & Heilman, K. M. (2002). Spatial bias: Effects of early reading direction on Korean subjects. Neuropsychologia, 40, 1003–1012.
Bosbach, S., Prinz, W., & Kerzel, D. (2004). A Simon Effect With Stationary Moving Stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 30, 39–55.
Bush, L. K., Hess, U., & Wolford, G. (1993). Transformations for within-subject designs: A Monte-Carlo investigation. Psychological Bulletin, 113, 566–579.
Butterworth, B. (2003). Pointing is the royal road to language for babies. In S. Kita (Ed.), Pointing: Where Language, Culture, and Cognition Meet (pp. 9–34). Mawah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Cappelletti, M., Freeman, E. D., & Cipolotti, L. (2007). The middle house or the middle floor: Bisecting horizontal and vertical number lines in neglect. Neuropsychologia, 45, 2989–3000.
Casarotti, M., Michielin, M., Zorzi, M., & Umiltà, C. (2007). Temporal order judgment reveals how number magnitude affects visuospatial attention. Cognition, 102, 101–117.
Casasanto, D., & Boroditsky, L. (2008). Time in the mind: Using space to think about time. Cognition, 106, 579–593.
Chatterjee, A. (2001). Language and space: Some interactions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5, 55–61.
Chatterjee, A., Maher, L. M., Gonzalez-Rothi, L., & Heilman, K. M. (1995). Asyntactic thematic role assignment: The use of a temporal-spatial strategy. Brain and Language, 49, 125–139.
Chatterjee, A., Southwood, M. H., & Basilico, D. (1999). Verbs, events and spatial representations. Neuropsychologia, 37, 395–402.
Dehaene, S. (1992). Varieties of numerical abilities. Cognition, 44, 1–42.
Dehaene, S., Bossini, S., & Giraux, P. (1993). The mental representation of parity and number magnitude. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 122, 371–396.
Doricci, F., Guariglia, P., Gasparini, M., & Tomaiuolo, F. (2005). Dissociation between physical and mental number line bisection in right hemisphere brain damage. Nature Neuroscience, 8, 1663–1665.
Fias, W., & Fischer, M. H. (2005). Spatial Representation of Numbers. In J. I. D. Campbell (Ed.), Handbook of Mathematical Cognition (pp. 43–54). Hove: Psychology Press.
Fischer, M. H., Castel, A. D., Dodd, M. D., & Pratt, J. (2003). Perceiving numbers causes spatial shifts of attention. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 555–556.
Gentner, D., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2003). Language in mind: Advances in the study of language and thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gevers, W., Reynvoet, B., & Fias, W. (2003). The mental representation of ordinal sequences is spatially organized. Cognition, 87, B87–B95.
Gevers, W., Reynvoet, B., & Fias, W. (2004). The mental representation of ordinal sequences is spatially organised: Evidence from days of the week. Cortex, 40, 171–172.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Longo, M. R., & Lourenço, S. F. (2007). Spatial attention and the mental number line: Evidence for characteristic biases and compression. Neuropsychologia, 45, 1400–1407.
Lorch, R. F., & Myers, J. L. (1990). Regression analyses of repeated measures data in cognitive research. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 16, 149–157.
Maas, A., & Russo, A. (2003). Directional bias in the mental representation of spatial events: Nature or culture? Psychological Science, 14, 296–301.
Maher, L. M., Chatterjee, A., Gonzalez-Rothi, L., & Heilman, K. M. (1995). Agrammatic sentence production: The use of a temporal-spatial strategy. Brain and Language, 49, 105–124.
Moyer, R. S., & Landauer, T. K. (1967). Time required for judgements of numerical inequality. Nature, 215, 1519–1520.
Núñez, R., & Sweetser, E. (2006). With the future behind them: convergent evidence from aymara language and gesture in the crosslinguistic comparison of spatial construals of time. Cogn Sci, 30, 1–49.
Ouellet, M., Santiago, J., Funes, M. J., & Lupiáñez, J. (2008) Thinking about time makes attention move to the sides (submitted)
Price, M. C., & Mentzoni, R. A. (2008). Where is January? The month-SNARC effect in sequence-form synaesthetes. Cortex, 44, 890–907.
Priftis, K., Zorzi, M., Meneghello, F., Marenzi, R., & Umiltà, C. (2006). Explicit vs. implicit processing of representational space in neglect: Dissociations in accessing the mental number line. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 680–688.
Proctor, R., & Cho, Y. S. (2006). Polarity correspondence: a general principle for performance of speeded binary classification tasks. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 416–442.
Rinaldi, M. C., & Pizzamiglio, L. (2006). When space merges into language. Neuropsychologia, 44, 556–565.
Santiago, J., Lupiáñez, J., Pérez, E., & Funes, M. J. (2007). Time (also) flies from left to right. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 512–516.
Schneider, W., Eschman, A., & Zuccolotto, A. (2002). E-Prime user’s guide. Pittsburgh, PA: Psychology Software Tools.
Stoianov, I., Kramer, P., Umiltá, C., & Zorzi, M. (2008). Visuospatial priming of the mental number line. Cognition, 106, 770–779.
Torralbo, A., Santiago, J., & Funes, M. J. (2006). Flexible conceptual projection of time onto spatial frames of reference. Cognitive Science, 30, 745–757.
Tversky, B. (2004). Narratives of space, time, and life. Mind and Language, 19, 380–392.
Tversky, B., Kugelmass, S., & Winter, A. (1991). Cross-cultural and developmental trends in graphic productions. Cognitive Psychology, 23, 515–557.
Vallesi, A., Binns, M. A. & Shallice, T. (in press) An effect of spatial-temporal association of response codes: Understanding the cognitive representations of time. Cognition.
Walsh, V. (2003). A theory of magnitude: Common cortical metrics of time, space and quantity. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 483–488.
Weger, U. & Pratt, J. (in press) Time flies like an arrow: Shifting spatial attention in response to adverbs of time. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
Zacks, J. M., & Tversky, B. (2001). Event structure in perception and conception. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 3–21.
Zacks, J. M., Tversky, B., & Iyer, G. (2001). Perceiving, remembering, and communicating structure in events. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 29–58.
Zebian, S. (2005). Linkages between number concepts, spatial thinking, and directionality of writing: The SNARC effect and the REVERSED SNARC effect in English, Arabic monoliterates, biliterates, and illiterate Arabic speakers. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 5, 165–190.
Zorzi, M., Priftis, K., & Umiltà, C. (2002). Neglect disrupts the mental number line. Nature, 417, 138–139.
Zorzi, M., Priftis, K., Meneghello, F., Marenzi, R., & Umiltà, C. (2006). The spatial representation of numerical and non-numerical sequences: Evidence from neglect. Neuropsychologia, 44, 1061–1067.
Acknowledgments
The present research was supported by grant SEJ2006-04732 of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, Julio Santiago (PI). Portions of this research were presented at the Theme Session on Conceptual Projection, New Directions in Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Brighton, UK, October 23rd–25th, 2005, and also at the 10th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Krakow, Poland, July 15th–20th, 2007. Special thanks are due to Ana Luque for volunteering to be the character of the event sequences in Experiments 2 and 3.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Santiago, J., Román, A., Ouellet, M. et al. In hindsight, life flows from left to right. Psychological Research 74, 59–70 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-008-0220-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-008-0220-0