Recognizing the Directionality of an Arrow Affects Subsequent Judgments of a Temporal Statement: The Role of Directionality in Spatial Metaphors

English speakers use horizontal spatial metaphors (e.g., before/after) to talk about time relative to vertical spatial metaphors (e.g., up/down), so they may be faster in verifying temporal targets (e.g., June comes after April) that are preceded by primes that activate horizontal, relative to vertical, spatial metaphors. We examined this horizontal bias by comparing the effect of horizontal versus vertical arrows as primes on judging the validity of pure temporal targets (e.g., June is earlier/later than April) versus spatiotemporal targets (e.g., June comes before/after April). The horizontal bias occurred for both types of targets, and participants were faster when the arrow direction (e.g., right pointing; arrow flying from left to right) was congruent with the meaning of relation words in the temporal targets (e.g., later—time flowing from the past to the future) than when it was incongruent, consistent with the view of the left–past/right–future representation of time.