Time is a uniquely human yet culturally ubiquitous concept acquired over childhood and provides an underlying dimension for episodic memory and estimating durations. Because time, unlike distance, lacks a sensory representation, we hypothesized that subjects at different ages attribute different meanings to it when comparing durations; pre-kindergarten children compare the density of events, while adults use the concept of observer-independent absolute time. We asked groups of pre-kindergarteners, school-age children, and adults to compare the durations of an "eventful" and "uneventful" video, both 1-minute long but durations unknown to subjects. In addition, participants were asked to express the durations of both videos non-verbally with simple hand gestures. Statistical analysis has revealed highly polarized temporal biases in each group, where pre-kindergarteners estimated the duration of the eventful video as "longer." In contrast, the school-age group of children and adults claimed the same about the uneventful video. The tendency to represent temporal durations with a horizontal hand gesture was evident among all three groups, with an increasing prevalence with age. These results support the hypothesis that pre-kindergarten-age children use heuristics to estimate time, and they convert from availability to sampling heuristics between pre-kindergarten and school age.

Razumijevanje apstraktnih pojmova predstavlja važan izazov za teorijski okvir utemeljene kognicije. Jedna je mogućnost da se apstraktni pojmovi utemeljuju u afektivnim stanjima. U ovome smo radu ispitali hipotezu povezuje li se apstraktni matematički pojam parnosti broja (par – nepar) s pozitivnim i negativnim afektivnim tonom koji je indirektno naznačen predznakom plus i minus. U prvome su eksperimentu ispitanici odgovarali na pitanje je li prezentirani broj paran ili neparan. Kao podražaji prezentirani su cijeli brojevi u rasponu od -9 do 9 bez -5, 0 i 5. Rezultati su pokazali dvosmjernu interakciju između predznaka i parnosti jer su ispitanici bili efikasniji u obradi pozitivnih nego u obradi negativnih parnih brojeva. Također, bili su efikasniji u obradi negativnih nego u obradi pozitivnih neparnih brojeva. U drugome su eksperimentu ispitanici odgovarali na pitanje je li prezentirani broj numerički veći ili manji od 5, pri čemu su trebali ignorirati predznak. Prezentirani su isti podražaji kao i u prvome eksperimentu. Dobivena je složenija trosmjerna interakcija u kojoj su ispitanici bili efikasniji u obradi pozitivnih nego u obradi negativnih parnih brojeva, kao i u prvome eksperimentu, ali taj se efekt pojavio samo za brojeve veće od 5. Rezultati su interpretirani u okviru teorije o korespondenciji polariteta i teorije centralnoga afektivnog utemeljenja.

Comprehension of abstract concepts presents an important challenge for a theoretical framework of grounded cognition. One possibility is that abstract concepts are grounded in affective states. In this work, we examined the hypothesis that abstract mathematical concept of parity (even-odd) is associated with positive and negative hedonic tone. In the first experiment, participants performed parity judgment task. Stimuli were whole numbers in the range between -9 to 9 excluding -5, 0 and 5. Results showed two-way interaction between sign and parity because participants were more efficient with positive than negative even numbers. They were also more efficient with negative than positive odd numbers. In the second experiment, participants were asked to judge whether the presented number is numerically greater or smaller than 5 while they should ignore the sign. The stimuli were the same as in the first experiment. Results showed more complex three-way interaction where participants were more efficient with positive than negative even numbers, as in the first experiment, but this result was restricted to numbers greater than 5. Results are discussed in the context of the theory of polarity correspondence and the theory of affective grounding.

In previous studies investigating the space–time compatibility effect, the experimental task always invites explicit spatial or temporal processing or both. In this study, we kept space and time irrelevant to the task. In a go/no-go task, participants (N = 50) were asked to either press a single button when they found the target or refrain from responding when there was no target in a search array. We manipulated the duration of the target-alone presentation that preceded a 7 × 7 search array consisting of either target plus distractors or distractors alone. The results revealed faster responses to shorter durations when the target appeared in the upper relative to the lower space. A similar effect also appeared along the diagonal axis with faster responses to shorter durations in upper-left relative to lower-right space. In contrast, no such difference was found along the horizontal axis. We hypothesize that vertical and diagonal space–time associations arise from the grounding of mental representation of time in physical experiences.