Fictive Motion - Influence On Perception of Time

Influence On Perception of Time

A recent avenue of research has focused on fictive motion's influence on perceptions of time. People often speak about time in terms of motion. English speakers may describe themselves as moving through time toward or past events with statements such as "we're entering the holidays" or "we slipped past the due date." They may also talk about events as moving toward or past themselves with statements such as "tough times are approaching us" or "summer vacation has passed". Broadly speaking, metaphorical talk about time borrows from two different perspectives for conceptualizing motion. In the ego-moving metaphor, one progresses along a timeline toward the future, while in the time-moving metaphor, a timeline is conceived as a conveyor belt upon which events move from the future to the past like packages. (e.g. Lakoff 1987).

Interestingly, it appears that not only does thinking about actual motion influence people's judgments about time, but thinking about fictive motion has the same effect, suggesting that thinking about one abstract domain may influence people's understanding of another. This raises the question of whether the influence of fictive motion on people's understanding of time is rooted in a concrete, embodied conception of motion, such that both time and fictive motion are ultimately understood in terms of simulations of concrete experience, or whether the effects of fictive motion are a product of the way that language influences thought.