Esther Walker

The Continuity of Metaphor: Evidence from Temporal Gestures.

Reasoning about bedrock abstract concepts such as time, number, and valence relies on spatial metaphor and often on multiple spatial metaphors for a single concept. Previous research has documented, for instance, both future-in-front and future-to-right metaphors for time in English speakers. It is often assumed that these metaphors, which appear to have distinct experiential bases, remain distinct in online temporal reasoning. In two studies we demonstrate that, contra this assumption, people systematically combine these metaphors. Evidence for this combination was found in both directly elicited (Study 1) and spontaneous co-speech (Study 2) gestures about time. These results provide first support for the hypothesis that the metaphorical representation of time, and perhaps other abstract domains as well, involves the continuous co-activation of multiple metaphors rather than the selection of only one.

Disentangling Spatial Metaphors for Time Using Non-spatial Responses and Auditory Stimuli

While we often talk about time using spatial terms, experimental investigation of space-time associations has focused primarily on the space in front of the participant. This has had two consequences: the disregard of the space behind the participant (exploited in language and gesture) and the creation of potential task demands produced by spatialized manual button-presses. We introduce and test a new paradigm that uses auditory stimuli and vocal responses to address these issues. Participants made temporal judgments about deictic or sequential relationships presented auditorily along a body-centered sagittal or transversal axis. Results involving the transversal axis replicated previous work while sagittal axis results were surprising. Deictic judgments did not use the sagittal axis but sequential judgments did, in a previously undocumented way. Participants associated earlier judgments with the space in front of them and later judgments with the space behind them. These findings, using a new approach, provide evidence that different time concepts recruit space differently, mediated by meaning, stimulus modality and response mode.

Fillers as Signals: Evidence From a Question–Answering Paradigm

The present study examined the influence of a human or computer “partner” on the production of fillers (um and uh) during a question and answer task. Experiment 1 investigated whether or not responding to a human partner as opposed to a computer partner results in a higher rate of filler production. Participants produced many more fillers when responding to a human. Experiment 2 tested the possibility that this large effect was driven by the mere presence of another person. It was not. There was, however, a small effect of human presence on fillers, a novel result. That individuals modulate their filler use in response to the nature of their speech partner is a critical piece of evidence in favor of the filler-for-partner hypothesis. Collectively, our data provide convergent support for the theoretical position that fillers are not solely produced as the result of difficulties in speech planning or production, but they also play a functional role in the communicative interaction between speakers and listeners.

The spatial alignment of time: Differences in alignment of deictic and sequence time along the sagittal and lateral axes

People use space in a variety of ways to structure their thoughts about time. The present report focuses on the different ways that space is employed when reasoning about deictic (past/future relationships) and sequence (earlier/later relationships) time. In the first study, we show that deictic and sequence time are aligned along the lateral axis in a manner consistent with previous work, with past and earlier events associated with left space and future and later events associated with right space. However, the alignment of time with space is different along the sagittal axis. Participants associated future events and earlier events-not later events-with the space in front of their body and past and later events with the space behind, consistent with the sagittal spatial terms (e.g., ahead, in front of) that we use to talk about deictic and sequence time. In the second study, we show that these associations between sequence time and sagittal space are sensitive to person-perspective. This suggests that the particular space-time associations observed in English speakers are influenced by a variety of different spatial properties, including spatial location and perspective.