Bylund Emanuel, Gygax Pascal, Samuel Steven, Athanasopoulos Panos
Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2020 Feb;73(2):174-182. doi: 10.1177/1747021819867624. Epub 2019 Aug 14.
Do we conceptualise the future as being behind us or in front of us? Although this question has traditionally been investigated through the lens of spatiotemporal metaphors, new impetus was recently provided by the Temporal-Focus Hypothesis. This hypothesis holds that the mapping of temporal concepts onto the front-back axis is determined by an individual's temporal focus, which varies as a function of culture, age, and short-term attention shifts. Here, we instead show that participants map the future on to a frontal position, regardless of cultural background and short-term shifts. However, one factor that does influence temporal mappings is age, such that older participants are more likely to map the future as behind than younger participants. These findings suggest that ageing may be a major determinant of space-time mappings, and that additional data need to be collected before concluding that culture or short-term attention do influence space-time mappings.
我们是将未来概念化为在我们身后还是在我们面前？尽管这个问题传统上是通过时空隐喻的视角来研究的，但时间焦点假说最近提供了新的推动力。该假说认为，时间概念在前-后轴上的映射是由个体的时间焦点决定的，而时间焦点会随着文化、年龄和短期注意力转移而变化。在这里，我们反而表明，无论文化背景和短期变化如何，参与者都会将未来映射到前方位置。然而，一个确实影响时间映射的因素是年龄，即年龄较大的参与者比年龄较小的参与者更有可能将未来映射为在身后。这些发现表明，衰老可能是时空映射的一个主要决定因素，并且在得出文化或短期注意力确实会影响时空映射的结论之前，需要收集更多数据。
