The temporal-spatial metaphorical expression difference in spatial schema design

Abstract

The temporal-spatial metaphor is a conceptual metaphor which can help construct the concept of time through spatial experience. The motion direction in space can be used to represent the motion direction of time. When comprehending the relative motion between time and people, two kinds of time movement perspectives are often used in the frame of temporal-spatial metaphor, namely the ego-moving perspective and the time-moving perspective. The present study focused on revealing the kinds of spatial schemas that could represent time movement perspectives and explored the feasibility of these spatial schemas under different situations, which will be helpful in depicting the concept of time in a human-computer interaction environment. We conducted two experiments to explore to what extent vertical and horizontal spatial schemas could represent the two perspectives of time movement. The results showed that the foreshortening vertical spatial schema could be adopted to represent both the ego-moving and the time-moving perspectives, and the horizontal spatial schema is more appropriate to describe the ego-moving perspective. The findings have implications for computer spatial schema design in time representation.