Representation of Autobiographical Memories Along a Sagittal Front-to-Back Mental Timeline: Evidence from Mandarin Speakers

Accumulating evidence over the past decades has established that people conceptualize elapsing time along a sagittal mental timeline (MTL). A recent study discovered that representations of autobiographical memories (AMs) also proceed along a sagittal back-to-front MTL, consistent with the direction of sensorimotor experiences such as walking or running. The present investigation attempted to clarify and extend that work by exploring if the back-to-front axis for the temporal organization of AMs is a universal phenomenon across linguistic communities. An experiment that recruited Mandarin speakers as participants was conducted. The experimental task asked participants to categorize personal events retrieved from their AMs as past- or future-related via distinct key arrangements that corresponded to a back-to-front and a front-to-back line respectively. Results show that cross-linguistic variations may exist in the directionalities of MTL underlying AM processes. Contrary to the back-to-front MTL observed among Italian speakers in the aforementioned research, Mandarin speakers conceived of AM progression as oriented from front to back. The findings of the present study provide preliminary evidence to validate the predictive power of spatiotemporal metaphors rather than sensorimotor experience in shaping a sagittal MTL for AM representations, especially when the two forces contradict each other in terms of spatial directions.