Abstract

Linguistic evidence indicates that many languages metaphorically construct time through spatial experiences and sensorimotor schemas. This intricate association of human movements with temporal cognition engenders a seminal question: Can our bodily motions modulate our mental representations of time? In pursuit of this query, we conducted two experimental studies to probe how passive bodily movements influence temporal cognition in Mandarin-speaking individuals – who are thought to conceptualize time along both sagittal and vertical axes. Participants made temporal judgments about verbal stimuli corresponding to future or past conceptions while undergoing displacement along forward-backward (Experiment 1) and upward-downward trajectories (Experiment 2). The results demonstrated an expedited categorization for future-related verbal stimuli during forward propulsion compared to rearward, and similarly, for downward compared to upward. The results are not readily attributable to spoken metaphors, given that Mandarin employs bodily-motion information to depict both past and future events on the vertical axis. Thus, a more credible explanation appears to be a closer association of the sensorimotor system with future event representations. Taken together, these results underscore the critical role of motor activity and the perception of self-motion in shaping higher-order temporal cognition.