College of International Studies, Southwest University, China.
School of Foreign Languages, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, China.
Cogn Sci. 2019 Apr;43(4):e12728. doi: 10.1111/cogs.12728.
According to the Body-Specificity Hypothesis (BSH), people implicitly associate positive ideas with the side of space on which they are able to act more fluently with their dominant hand. Though this hypothesis has been rigorously tested across a variety of populations and tasks, the studies thus far have only been conducted in linguistic and cultural communities which favor the right over the left. Here, we tested the effect of handedness on implicit space-valence mappings in Tibetan practitioners of Bön who show a strong religious preference for the left, in comparison to an English group. Results showed that Bön right-handers tended to implicitly associate positive valence more strongly with their dominant side of space despite strong explicit associations between the left and goodness in their religion. This pattern of results found in Bön participants was indistinguishable from that found in English speakers. The findings of the present study support the BSH, demonstrating that space-valence mappings in people's minds are shaped by their bodily experience, which appears to be independent of space-valence mappings enshrined in cultural conventions.
根据身体特异性假说（BSH），人们会将积极的想法与他们用惯用手更流畅地活动的空间侧联系起来。尽管这一假说已经在各种人群和任务中得到了严格的检验，但迄今为止的研究仅在偏爱使用右手的语言和文化群体中进行。在这里，我们测试了在藏传本教修行者中，惯用手对隐性空间价值映射的影响，与英语组相比，本教修行者强烈偏爱左手。结果表明，尽管在他们的宗教中，左手与善良之间存在强烈的明确关联，但本教右撇子倾向于将积极的价值与他们的主导空间侧更强烈地联系起来。本教参与者中发现的这种结果模式与英语使用者的结果模式无法区分。本研究的结果支持 BSH，表明人们头脑中的空间价值映射是由他们的身体经验塑造的，而身体经验似乎独立于文化习俗中规定的空间价值映射。
