摘要
In this paper we examine how English and Mandarspeakers think about time, and we test how the patterns of thinking the two groups relate to patterns linguistic and cultural experience. Mandarin, vertical spatial metaphors are used more frequently to talk about time than they are English; English relies primarily on horizontal terms. We present results from two tasks comparing English and Mandarspeakers' temporal reasoning. The tasks measure how people spatialize time three-dimensional space, including the sagittal (front/back), transverse (left/right), and vertical (up/down) axes. Results of Experiment 1 show that people automatically create spatial representations the course of temporal reasoning, and these implicit spatializations differ accordance with patterns language, even a non-linguistic task. Both groups showed evidence of a left-to-right representation of time, accordance with writing direction, but only Mandarspeakers showed a vertical top-to-bottom pattern for time (congruent with vertical spatiotemporal metaphors Mandarin). Results of Experiment 2 confirm and extend these findings, showing that bilinguals' representations of time depend on both long-term and proximal aspects of language experience. Participants who were more proficient Mandarwere more likely to arrange time vertically (an effect of previous language experience). Further, bilinguals were more likely to arrange time vertically when they were tested Mandarthan when they were tested English (an effect of immediate linguistic context).