The development of space-time mappings without formal schooling

• In Event: Scientific Folk Theories

Abstract

Across many cultures, people use space to represent time. Prior work has shown that writing direction (Bergen & Lau, 2012; Pitt & Casasanto, 2020), spatiotemporal metaphors (Núñez & Sweetser, 2006; Sullivan & Bui, 2016), and cultural artifacts for time, such as calendars (Starr & Srinivasan, 2021), shape the way that people spatialize time. For example, in English we often gesture to the right when discussing the future, and we describe the future as in front of us. These spatiotemporal mappings continue developing into middle childhood (Starr & Srinivasan, 2021; Tillman et al., 2018).

In the present study, we investigated how children and adults map the future and past onto space without the influences of writing and cultural artifacts for time. We worked with the Tsimane’, an indigenous group of farmer-foragers who live in the Amazon basin of Bolivia, to collect these data in August 2022. In their day-to-day activities, the communities of Tsimane’ that we worked with do not typically read, write, or use watches, phones, or calendars. In line with prior work, we predicted that children and adults would map time onto space in an internally consistent fashion. In line with the hypothesis that it is experience with formal spatialization that leads to convergence on a consistent mapping between people (i.e., cultural consistency), we predicted that there would be variability in the future/past mappings between people for both children and adults. 25 children (n_female= 13; M_age=11.3, range=7.5-13.4) and 34 adults (n_female=14; M_age=35.2, range=17.6-85.2) participated in a temporal diagram task and a timeline construction task. The temporal diagram task measured participants’ mappings of past and future on the sagittal axis (front/back). The timeline construction task captured participants’ spontaneous spatializations of the past and future in the lateral (left/right) and vertical (up/down) axes. A subset of participants also completed an interview about gestures for talking about time.

Preliminary results for the temporal diagram task revealed that 72% of children and 68% of adults were internally consistent, meaning they used the same mapping, either front-future or front-past, on at least three out of the four trials, and this proportion was not different between age groups (χ2(1)=0.002, p=.96). In children, the proportion of front-future and front-past mappers did not differ, at 40% and 32%, respectively (χ2(1)=0.09, p=.77). In adults, the proportion also did not statistically differ, at 45% and 23%, respectively (χ2(1)=2.59, p=.11). Further, these proportions did not differ between age groups (front-future: χ2(1)=0.01, p=.91; front-past: χ2(1)=0.24, p=.62). Analyses for this task, as well as the timeline construction task and the gesture interview, are ongoing.

These results suggest that reading, writing, and cultural artifacts contribute to cultural consistency. Without rigorous exposure to formal spatializing experiences, no single mapping orientation becomes culturally dominant. There are many additional avenues to explore regarding what contributes to spatiotemporal mappings with the Tsimane’, such as spatiotemporal metaphors, gesture, and allocentric environmental referents, such as the sun and the flow direction of the local river.

Authors

• Elena Leib, University of California - Berkeley
  Presenting Author

• Ariel Starr, University of Washington

• Steven Piantadosi