earticle

영어

This paper aims to investigate whether or not our thought about abstract motion can influence our understanding of time in English and Korean. Two experiments examined that the direction of abstract motion through sequences of numbers would influence reasoning about time. The results of the two experiments indicate that abstract motion can influence temporal reasoning. Specifically, descending number order produced a greater proportion of Monday or leftward(←) responses relative to Friday or rightward(→), while ascending number order produced no reliable difference between the proportion of Monday or leftward(←) and Friday or rightward(→) responses. I suggest that the results should come from the fact that Korean’s familiarity with time-moving sentences in everyday language has more influence on temporal reasoning than their familiarity with forward movement in their everyday experience with motion. Both Experiment 1 that numbers and blanks were presented downward vertically and Experiment 2 that numbers and blanks were presented upward vertically gave the same results. This result indicate that reading and writing direction (downward versus upward) did not and English. Based on the results of this study, I conclude that abstract motion can influence the understanding of time in English and Korean.