Abstract: How do people represent things they can never see or touch? Metaphoric mapping theory assumes that abstract concepts such as time are represented in terms of concrete, readily available dimensions. “Time is Space” is the prototype of metaphorical form of time. It is well known that cognitive representation of numerals has spatial characteristics. People are faster to respond to small numbers with left hand than right hand, and to large numbers with right hand than left hand. Which was called the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNRAC) effect. Similar SNARC effect, the congruity between spatial and temporal information along the ‘mental time line ’ (past-left and future-right mapping ) may facilitate manual responses, which yield spatial-temporal association of response codes (STEARC) effect. STEARC effect has been shown for several ordinal sequences, such as conventional temporal order (months of the year, days of the week, letters of the alphabet), meaningful event sequences (silent movie clips, photograph series), newly learned ordered sequences (newly learned the list of words through visual or auditory presentations, Greek letters under different learning levels). The STEARC effect has been demonstrated in various tasks, such as different modalities, time-points in a 3-dimensional space, eye movement responses. Several studies suggested that temporal concept is mentally aligned not only horizontally with a left-to-right directionality but also vertically with a top-to-bottom directionality. But spatial direction of temporal order representation is flexible: in cultures with left-to-right orthography time appears to flow rightward, but in cultures with right-to-left orthography time flows leftward. However, new conceptual metaphors can be acquired by quick learning. Boroditsky trained English participants to think about time using a new conceptual mapping through only 90 training trials. The temporal reference of words can orient spatial attention. Some studies used a cuing paradigm to discriminate between spatial attention orienting and manual response codes activation when using future and past words as cues. Centrally presented words referring to the past and to the future are able to orient visual attention and prime motor responses in correspondence with the past-left and future-right mapping. Finally, several future research directions were suggested. The first one is neural mechanisms of spatial and temporal concept. Neuropsychological studies have revealed that processing of temporal and spatial are related to right parietal cortex, lateral intraparietal area, left parietal cortex. Second, the human cognition of time can be divided into different ranges according to length of time. The association between time and space may differ with various time ranges. Third, spatial representation of time is different around world. The concept of time is special in Chinese. Chinese concept of time is circular, Western concept of time is linear. Chinese believe reincarnation, afterlife. Fourth, individual difference may affect temporal representation, especially temporal self.

Key words: temporal order, Space, metaphor, STERAC effect

摘要： 时间是个高度抽象的概念，必须依靠具体的、易感知的事物进行表征。时间表征本质上是隐喻性的，而时间的空间隐喻是时间隐喻表征的原型。受到数字空间表征研究的启示，发现时序表征同样具有空间特性。时序表征具有空间特性具有一定的普遍性，但是在具体的水平或垂直空间维度、“左-右”或“右-左”空间方向上存在一定的灵活性；此外时序能够导致空间注意的转移。

关键词: 时序, 空间, 隐喻, STEARC效应