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Abstract

Abstract

According to the Temporal Focus Hypothesis, people’s orientations of sagittal spatiotemporal mappings are conditioned by their characteristic patterns of attention to the past and/or future. While a growing body of research has investigated how a variety of psychological, social, and environmental factors associated with temporal focus shape implicit space-time mappings, little is known about whether the degree of entropy in the visual context influences spatial conceptions of time. Based on the findings that high-entropy images invoke a past-focused mindset and low-entropy images invoke a future-focused mindset, the current work explores how entropy impacts people’s temporal focus and mental representations of time. In Study 1 involving a self-report measure of temporal focus, we found that while high-entropy images increased Chinese students’ attention to the past and led to more past-in-front responses, low-entropy images increased Chinese students’ attention to the future and led to more future-in-front responses. Using both self-reported measures and other-report ratings of temporal focus, Study 2 conceptually replicated the findings of Study 1 in a more diverse population. Considered together, these results bolster support for the Temporal Focus Hypothesis that entropy triggers corresponding changes in temporal focus and in mental sagittal space-time mappings.

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2023-09-15
2024-09-09

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/content/journals/10.1075/rcl.00161.wan
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The physics of time
John Benjamins ; https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00161.wan
/content/journals/10.1075/rcl.00161.wan
/content/journals/10.1075/rcl.00161.wan
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keywords: space-time mapping ; entropy ; time spatialization ; Temporal Focus Hypothesis ; visual cues

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