Space is a late heuristic of elapsing time: New evidence from the STEARC effect

To get a concrete representation of its intangible flow, culture frames elapsing time along spatially oriented mental or graphical lines, which are organised according to reading habits, from left to right in western cultures. One of the strongest evidence for this spatial representation of time is...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cortex 2023-07, Vol.164, p.21-32
Main Authors: Scozia, Gabriele, Pinto, Mario, Lozito, Silvana, Lasaponara, Stefano, Binetti, Nicola, Pazzaglia, Mariella, Doricchi, Fabrizio
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Heuristics
Humans
Mental time line
Reaction Time - physiology
SNARC effect
Space Perception - physiology
Space–number association
Space–time association
Spatial cognition
STEARC effect
Time
Time Factors
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Summary:To get a concrete representation of its intangible flow, culture frames elapsing time along spatially oriented mental or graphical lines, which are organised according to reading habits, from left to right in western cultures. One of the strongest evidence for this spatial representation of time is the STEARC effect (Spatial–Temporal Association of Response Codes), which consists of faster coding of “short” durations with motor responses in the left side of space and of “long” durations with responses in the right side. Here, we investigated the STEARC as a function of response speed in two different experiments in healthy participants. Surprisingly, in both sub- and supra-second ranges, we found the STEARC only when decisions on time durations were slow, while no spatial representation of time was present with fast decisions. This first demonstrates that space slowly takes over faster non-spatial processing of time flow and that it is possible to empirically separate the behavioural manifestations of the non-spatial and the nurtured spatial mechanisms of time coding.
ISSN:0010-9452
1973-8102
DOI:10.1016/j.cortex.2023.03.009