How bilinguals in Singapore think about space and time

Are spatio-temporal orientations universal, or do language and/or culture affects them? The present study explores the effects of language, and reading and writing directions on spatio-temporal orientations in 45 English-Mandarin Chinese university students (23 men, 22 women) in Singapore. All had undergone bilingual education in Singapore since childhood. The participants were separated into English and Mandarin Chinese groups and five tasks were performed. The card arrangement task found left-to-right bias for temporal sequence in both groups, with more variations of directions found in Mandarin Chinese group. Three-dimensional task suggests that two mental timelines (horizontal and vertical) exists. Both groups also adopt different perspective of time when answering ambiguous meeting question, but has no difference when it comes to ego-moving perspective. Toys arrangement task demonstrated that language did not affect the type of frame of reference (FoR) adopted, and that majority from both language groups adopted ideocentric and relative FoR. Arrow of time task provided further evidence that two mental timelines exists. Cultural metaphors (e.g. living in the present or having a long future), rather than language, may have affected how one positions themselves on the mental timeline. The demographics of our bilinguals revealed that they are exposed to other languages with different reading and writing direction, hence results may be affected. These findings add to the current pool of cross-cultural research about spatio-temporal orientation. However given the mixed results about language and cultural effects found in bilinguals, there may be unknown mechanisms affecting how we think about spatio-temporal orientations.Bachelor of Art