A growing body of evidence suggested that time could be separately represented either on the lateral or sagittal axis. And the lateral mental time line has an origin associated with sensorimotor experience, e.g., reading/writing. However, it is still not clear whether the sagittal mental time line also originates from sensorimotor experience, e.g., walking/running. To address this question, we examined how the movement experience affected the space–time mapping on the lateral and sagittal axes using the virtual reality technique in two experiments. The results showed that the virtual movement experience had significant effects on the space–time mapping on the lateral axis (Experiment 1), but not on the sagittal axis (Experiment 2). This finding supported that the space–time mapping on the lateral axis does originate from sensorimotor experience, while the space–time mapping on the sagittal axis more likely originates from spatial metaphors in languages or other cultural experiences.

越来越多的证据表明，时间可以分别在横轴或矢状轴上表示。横向心理时间线的起源与感觉运动体验（例如读/写）相关。然而，目前尚不清楚矢状心理时间线是否也源于感觉运动体验，例如步行/跑步。为了解决这个问题，我们在两个实验中使用虚拟现实技术研究了运动体验如何影响横轴和矢状轴上的时空映射。结果表明，虚拟运动体验对横轴上的时空映射有显着影响（实验1），但对矢状轴上的时空映射没有显着影响（实验2）。这一发现支持横轴上的时空映射确实源自感觉运动经验，而矢状轴上的时空映射更可能源自语言或其他文化体验中的空间隐喻。