Moving through time: The influence of body motion on temporal concepts of future in Chinese sighted and blind people.

According to Conceptual Metaphor Theory, individuals represent abstract concepts, such as time, through more concrete experiences, such as the sensorimotor system. For example, left and right spatial orientations can be projected onto temporal concepts of past and future in mental models, which is consistent with various writing systems across cultures. Although evidence indicates that manual and visual experiences can influence lateral mental timelines, it remains unclear whether passive whole-body motion can exert similar effects. In this study, we explored this hypothesized effect among Chinese sighted and blind participants. Participants responded to verbal stimuli corresponding to past and future events while being displaced leftward and rightward on a motion platform. The results demonstrated an expedited categorization of future-related words during rightward motion compared to leftward motion. However, no analogous effects were observed for the categorization of past-related stimuli. This partial metaphor-congruency effect cannot be explained by linguistic conventions, as there are no explicit lateral metaphors for time in Mandarin Chinese. Therefore, a more plausible explanation relates to the malleability of future event representations, which can be more easily shaped by motion experiences compared to past event representations. Together, these findings highlight the significant role of bodily movements in influencing temporal thought.