Temporal reasoning

We can draw a second explanation for the apparent relative difficulty of time-moving metaphors from recent work on temporal reasoning by Schaeken, Johnson-Laird and d Ydewalle (in press). Because, as discussed above, the relative temporal location of an observer is not specified in the time-moving metaphor, the observer can occur as a third point anywhere on the timeline. For example, the statement John arrives ahead of Mary can produce the following three timelines ... 

A final point is the conceptual utility of the space-time metaphor. The two space-time systems exhibit three characteristics that facilitate reasoning, as laid out by Gattis (in preparation). They use ordered space to represent elements (here, events) and their relations (sequential ordering) they use spatial dimensions (here, a single linear dimension, which is placed in correspondence with time s single dimension) and they appear to form non-arbitrary analogs for abstract concepts. Temporal reasoning is non-trivial, as any traveler can attest. Perhaps these metaphors retain their systematicity because they do serious work for us. 

AUen, J. F. (1991), Temporal Reasoning and Planning, in Temporal Reasoning and Planning, M. B. 

E.A. Emerson, A.K. Mok, A.P. Sistla J. Srinivasan (1992), Quantitative Temporal Reasoning , Journal of Real Time Systems 4,331-352. 

Hetland,L (2000). Listening to music enhances spatial - temporal reasoning evidence for the Mozart effect . J.AesthetEduc 34 (2000 FallAVinter). 

Bodner.M,Muftule.L.T,Nalcioglu.O,Shaw.G.L (2001). FMRI study relevant to the Mozart effect brain areas involved in spatial - temporal reasoning. Neurol.Res 23,683 - 690. 

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