Accumulating evidence over the last two decades has established the causal role of a unidirectional orthography in shaping speakers’ mental representations of time. Casasanto and Bottini (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 473-479, 2014) extended previous findings by showing that exposure to mirror-reversed orthography of speakers’ native language could completely redirect their mental timelines within minutes. However, the question of whether such a causal effect of writing direction on temporal cognition can be identified in speakers whose native languages adopt bidirectional orthographies remains underexplored in the literature. To address this issue, the present study focused on Japanese which uses bidirectional writing systems, one proceeding horizontally from left to right (HLR) and one vertically from top to bottom (VTB). Two experiments were performed, and the tasks asked participants to process standard/mirror orthography prime questions about time arranged horizontally or vertically, followed by horizontal or vertical arrays of pictorial target stimuli about temporal relations. Results demonstrated that Japanese speakers encoded passage of time into a top-to-bottom linear path commensurate with the VTB writing direction, but they did not align their mental representations of time with the HLR writing orientation. Accordingly, exposure to mirror-reversed bidirectional orthographies redirected Japanese speakers’ vertical but not horizontal space-time mappings. Theoretical implications concerning the causal effects of bidirectional orthographies and the generalizability of the representational flexibility of time maintained by Casasanto and Bottini (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 473-479) are discussed.

中文翻译：

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镜像读取可以逆转时间流吗？来自日语使用者的证据。

在过去的二十年中，越来越多的证据确定了单向正字法在塑造说话者的时间心理表征方面的因果作用。Casasanto和Bottini（实验心理学杂志：General，143，473-479，2014）通过证明说话者母语的镜像反向正字法可以在几分钟之内完全改变他们的心理时间表来扩展以前的发现。但是，在其母语采用双向正字法的说话者中，是否可以确定书写方向对时间认知的因果关系这一问题在文献中尚待探讨。为了解决这个问题，本研究的重点是日语，它使用双向书写系统，其中一种是从左到右水平方向（HLR），另一种是从上到下垂直方向（VTB）。进行了两个实验，任务要求参与者处理有关水平或垂直排列的时间的标准/镜面拼写法主要问题，然后是关于时间关系的图形目标刺激的水平或垂直排列。结果表明，日语使用者将时间的流逝编码为与VTB书写方向相对应的从上到下的线性路径，但他们并未将时间的心理表征与HLR书写方向对齐。因此，暴露于镜像反向双向正字法会改变日语使用者的垂直时空映射，而不是水平时空映射。