Departamento de Metodología, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, SpainDept. de Psicología Experimental y Fisiología del Comportamiento, Universidad de Granada, Spain.
Cogn Sci. 2006 Jul 8;30(4):745-57. doi: 10.1207/s15516709cog0000_67.
Flexibility in conceptual projection constitutes one of the most challenging issues in the embodiment and conceptual metaphor literatures. We sketch a theoretical proposal that places the burden of the explanation on attentional dynamics in interaction with mental models in working memory that are constrained to be maximally coherent. A test of this theory is provided in the context of the conceptual projection of time onto the domain of space. Participants categorized words presented at different spatial locations (back-front, left-right) as referring to the past or to the future. Responses were faster when the irrelevant word location was congruent with the back-past, front-future metaphoric mapping. Moreover, when a new highly task-relevant spatial frame of reference was introduced, it changed the projection of past and future onto space in a way that was congruent with the new frame (past was now projected to left space and future to right space), as predicted by the theory. This study shows that there is substantial flexibility in conceptual projection and opens a venue to study metaphoric variation across tasks, individuals, and cultures as the result of attentional dynamics.
概念投射的灵活性是体现论和概念隐喻文献中最具挑战性的问题之一。我们提出了一个理论假设，该假设将解释的负担放在与工作记忆中的心理模型相互作用的注意力动态上，这些心理模型被限制为最大程度的连贯。在时间到空间域的概念投射的背景下，对这一理论进行了检验。参与者将呈现在不同空间位置（前后、左右）的单词分类为表示过去或未来的单词。当无关单词的位置与过去-前、未来-前的隐喻映射一致时，反应会更快。此外，当引入一个新的高度任务相关的空间参照系时，它会以与新框架一致的方式改变过去和未来在空间上的投射（过去现在投射到左侧空间，未来投射到右侧空间），这正如该理论所预测的那样。这项研究表明，概念投射具有很大的灵活性，并为研究注意力动态导致的任务、个体和文化之间的隐喻变化开辟了一个场所。
