Beyond Here and Now: How Spatial Representations Support Abstract Thought

Abstract

The ability to think about concepts beyond our physical world is a hallmark of human intelligence. However, in contrast to things that are here and now, representing, remembering, and reasoning about abstract domains is more difficult. Many people across many cultures, languages, and ages get around this problem by grounding representations of abstract domains in space. Spatial representations of abstract domains may be so ubiquitous because they contribute to our ability to reason about them. One such representation is the mental timeline, a linear projection of time onto space, used to order events in time. The mental timeline may be so prevalent across different cultures because it supports a difficult and fragile aspect of episodic memory: remembering temporal information. In this dissertation, I used the mental timeline and temporal memory as a test case, examined with different methods at different ages, to reveal a piece of a larger intellectual puzzle concerning questions about how spatial mental representations are leveraged as tools for learning, remembering, and reasoning about abstract concepts. The first empirical study, described in Chapter 2, investigated young children’s development of linear representation of temporal order supported the development of their temporal memory abilities. The studies presented in Chapter 3 investigated whether infants, who have limited exposure to cultural artifacts that spatialize temporal information, leverage linear spatial cues to learn and remember temporal order. Finally, the study presented in Chapter 4 investigated adults’ spontaneous use of spatial cues when performing memory tasks and investigated whether pupillometry and gaze movement measures provide insight into memory processes. All empirical chapters suggest representing time and, in particular, temporal order in terms of space is beneficial for temporal memory in infancy, childhood, and adulthood.