Abstract
How do we capture temporal order, which is an invisible abstract concept? A lot of previous works have shown that the concept of temporal sequence, such as past-future or temporal earlier-temporal later, is highly involved with space. In particular, many research by gesture tasks and reaction time tasks have examined the relationship between horizontal left-right space and concept of temporal order, and then, showed that the culture, which have left to right writing direction relates left space to temporal earlier and right space to temporal later, and the culture, which have right to left writing direction has the opposite pattern. In this research, we examined that how temporal order of a series of image sequences is unfolded in horizontal space in Japanese, who has multiple writing directions in daily life, by using implicit reaction time task. As a result, Japanese participants also showed the space-time pattern, which similar to many culture, which have left to right writing direction (i.e. left space to temporal earlier and right space to temporal later). However, the pattern was weak and partial compared with previous studies, suggesting the possibility that cultural difference in writing direction are related to retrieval strategy of temporal order.
