Michele I. Feist

Spatial language influences memory for spatial scenes

Does language influence recognition for spatial scenes? In Experiments 1 and 2, participants viewed ambiguous pictures, with or without spatial sentences. In a yes—no recognition task, only the spatial sentences group made more false alarms toward the center of the spatial category than in the other direction; three other comparison groups showed no such tendency. This shift toward the core of the semantic category suggests that spatial language interacted with perceptual information during encoding. In Experiment 3, we varied the materials to test the interactive encoding account against a separate encoding account in which separately stored sentences are accessed during picture recognition. The results support the interactive encoding account in which spatial language influences the encoding and memory of spatial relations.

Individual differences in the interpretation of ambiguous statements about time

Abstract What factors influence the ways in which people resolve ambiguity? In English, two contrasting perspectives are implicit in deictic temporal expressions: the Moving Time metaphor conceptualizes time as moving forward towards the ego and the Moving Ego metaphor conceptualizes the ego as moving forward towards the future (Clark 1973). We examine the ambiguity arising from these two conceptualizations, claimed to be equally likely in a “neutral” context (Boroditsky and Ramscar 2002). Whereas previous studies have demonstrated that exposure to a spatial situation related to one interpretation may influence the resolution of the ambiguity (e.g. Boroditsky 2000; Nunez 2007), we focus on the lifestyle and personality factors of the participants as potential additional influences on ambiguity resolution in the interpretation of temporal metaphors. Experiment 1 asks whether lifestyle might influence an individuals approach to time and resulting resolution of temporal ambiguity, comparing preferred responses from two groups of participants with very different demands on the structuring of time: university students and administrators. We observed a difference between the two groups, with administrators more frequently adopting the Moving Time perspective and students, the Moving Ego perspective. Experiment 2 examines personality-related differences, focusing specifically on individual differences in procrastination (Lay 1986) and conscientiousness (John 1990). We observed a significant effect with participants who adopted the Moving Ego perspective reporting higher procrastination scores and lower conscientiousness scores than participants who adopted the Moving Time perspective. Experiment 3 investigates further personality-related differences, focusing specifically on individual differences in extroversion (John 1990). We observed a relationship between extroversion and disambiguation responses, with participants who adopted the Moving Ego perspective evidencing higher levels of extroversion. Taken together, the results from these three studies suggest that individual differences in lifestyle and personality may influence peoples perspectives on the movement of events in time and their concomitant interpretation of temporally ambiguous utterances, precluding a universal “neutral” context within which language is interpreted.

Justify your alpha

In response to recommendations to redefine statistical significance to P ≤ 0.005, we propose that researchers should transparently report and justify all choices they make when designing a study, including the alpha level.

Moving Through Time: The Role of Personality in Three Real‐Life Contexts

In English, two deictic space-time metaphors are in common usage: the Moving Ego metaphor conceptualizes the ego as moving forward through time and the Moving Time metaphor conceptualizes time as moving forward toward the ego (Clark, 1973). Although earlier research investigating the psychological reality of these metaphors has typically examined spatial influences on temporal reasoning (e.g., Boroditsky & Ramscar, 2002), recent lines of research have extended beyond this, providing initial evidence that personality differences and emotional experiences may also influence how people reason about events in time (Duffy & Feist, 2014; Hauser, Carter, & Meier, 2009; Richmond, Wilson, & Zinken, 2012). In this article, we investigate whether these relationships have force in real life. Building on the effects of individual differences in self-reported conscientiousness and procrastination found by Duffy and Feist (2014), we examined whether, in addition to self-reported conscientiousness and procrastination, there is a relationship between conscientious and procrastinating behaviors and temporal perspective. We found that participants who adopted the Moving Time perspective were more likely to exhibit conscientious behaviors, while those who adopted the Moving Ego perspective were more likely to procrastinate, suggesting that the earlier effects reach beyond the laboratory.

Motion through syntactic frames.

The introduction of Talmys (1985, 2000) typology sparked significant interest in linguistic relativity in the arena of motion language. Through careful analysis of the conflation patterns evident in the language of motion events, Talmy noted that one class of languages, V-languages, tends to encode path along with the fact of motion in motion verbs, while a second class, S-languages, tends to encode manner. In the experimental literature, it was reasoned that speakers may be expected to extend novel verbs in accordance with the lexicalization patterns of their native languages. However, the results regarding this prediction are mixed. In this paper, I examine the interplay between the meaning encoded in the motion verb itself and the meaning encoded in the motion description construction, offering a Gricean explanation for co-occurrence patterns and, by extension, for the mixed results. I then explore the implications of this argument for research on possible language effects on thought in this domain.

Spatial cognition through the lens of spatial language

Much recent research in spatial cognition has focused on the modeling and representation of geometrically tractable aspects of inter-object relations (e.g., Freksa 1992; Hois and Kutz 2008; Kurata 2008), providing elegant and precise characterizations of a variety of possible spatial relations. While this information is surely part of human spatial cognition, however, it is insufficient by itself to account for human conceptual representations of space (Klippel et al. 2008). Language has been called a ‘‘window into the mind’’; yet, what can we learn about spatial cognition from spatial language? Research into the meanings of locative spatial terms indicates that they are semantically quite complex (e.g., Coventry and Garrod 2004; Feist 2000, 2008; Levinson et al. 2003), suggesting that similar complexity may underlie spatial cognition more generally. Levinson (1996, p. 374) has argued that ‘‘[e]very linguistic distinction must be supported by the relevant conceptual distinctions, perceptual acuities and mental algorithms.’’ As such, those aspects of the spatial world that must be attended in order to fluently speak must similarly form a part of human spatial cognition. If this were not the case, as Levinson argues, it would be impossible to use the linguistic system. In this paper, I will explore a view of spatial cognition through the language used to describe static spatial scenes. Based on cross-linguistic evidence about the factors important to related terms in 24 languages and on experimental evidence about the use of both topological (e.g., in and on) and projective (e.g., left, right, front, and back) prepositions in English, I will argue that spatial cognition may, like spatial language, be influenced by three types of information about a spatial scene and the objects in it: geometric, functional, and qualitative physical information.

Moving beyond ‘Next Wednesday’: The interplay of lexical semantics and constructional meaning in an ambiguous metaphoric statement

Abstract What factors influence our understanding of metaphoric statements about time? By examining the interpretation of one such statement – namely, Next Wednesday’s meeting has been moved forward by two days – earlier research has demonstrated that people may draw on spatial perspectives, involving multiple spatially based temporal reference strategies, to interpret metaphoric statements about time (e.g. Boroditsky 2000; Kranjec 2006; McGlone and Harding 1998; Núñez et al. 2006). However, what is still missing is an understanding of the role of linguistic factors in the interpretation of temporal statements such as this one. In this paper, we examine the linguistic properties of this famous temporally ambiguous utterance, considered as an instantiation of a more schematic construction. In Experiment 1, we examine the roles of individual lexical items that are used in the utterance in order to better understand the interplay of lexical semantics and constructional meaning in the context of a metaphoric statement. Following up on prior suggestions in the literature, we ask whether the locus of the ambiguity is centred on the adverb, centred on the verb, or distributed across the utterance. The results suggest that the final interpretation results from an interplay of verb and adverb, suggesting a distributed temporal semantics analogous to the distributed semantics noted for the metaphoric source domain of space (Sinha and Kuteva 1995) and consistent with a constructional view of language (Goldberg 2003). In Experiment 2, we expand the linguistic factors under investigation to include voice and person. The findings suggest that grammatical person, but not grammatical voice, may also influence the interpretation of the Next Wednesday’s meeting metaphor. Taken together, the results of these two studies illuminate the interplay of lexical and constructional factors in the interpretation of temporal metaphors.

Codability and cost in the naming of motion events

With the introduction of Talmy’s (1985; 2000) typology for the linguistic encoding of motion events, the domain of motion event cognition has emerged as particularly tractable for the empirical examination of linguistic relativity. The current paper contributes to this literature, focusing on the differential encoding of one aspect of a motion event – manner of motion – and the potential for cognitive differences related to its encoding. When describing motion events, speakers of satellite-framed languages, such as English, have been found to be more likely to encode manner information than are speakers of verb-framed languages, such as Spanish (SLOBIN 2004). Building on this finding, the current study asks whether English speakers also experience lower cognitive costs when accessing manner information than do Spanish speakers. Pushing the connection farther, the study includes a range of manners varying in codability, allowing for a replication of the cross-linguistic correlations between codability and cost as tested within each linguistic population. The findings from both the cross-language comparisons and the within-language comparisons demonstrate a clear connection between codability and cognitive cost, suggesting an influence of language on the thought processes of speakers as they encode the motion events they see.