Does walking/running experience shape the sagittal mental time line?

Abstract

A growing body of evidence suggested that time could be separately represented either on the lateral or sagittal axis. And the lateral mental time line has an origin associated with sensorimotor experience, e.g., reading/writing. However, it is still not clear whether the sagittal mental time line also originates from sensorimotor experience, e.g., walking/running. To address this question, we examined how the movement experience affected the space-time mapping on the lateral and sagittal axes using the virtual reality technique in two experiments. The results showed that the virtual movement experience had significant effects on the space-time mapping on the lateral axis (Experiment 1), but not on the sagittal axis (Experiment 2). This finding supported that the space-time mapping on the lateral axis does originate from sensorimotor experience, while the space-time mapping on the sagittal axis more likely originates from spatial metaphors in languages or other cultural experiences.

Keywords: Mental time line; Sensorimotor experience; Space–time mapping; Spatial metaphor; Virtual reality.