Talk’s title: Writing Direction and Mental Representations of Time in Arabic and English Bilinguals
Abstract:
Studies have reported that writing direction affects people’s patterns of drawing, mental images, aesthetic preferences, and organization of time. This effect of writing direction on other cognitive aspects has been termed directionality bias. Studies have shown that literate speakers of languages with a Right-to-Left (RL) writing direction organize time from right to left, however, literate speakers of languages with Left-to-Right (LR) writing direction organize time from left to right. Therefore, Arabic speakers organize time from right to left, while English speakers organize time from left to right (Dobel et al., 2007; Fuhrman & Boroditsky, 2010; Maass and Russo, 2003; Tversky, Kugelmass, and Winter, 1991; Zebian, 2005). However, research on how Arabic-English bilinguals organize time has been limited. This study explores mental representations of time in Arabic monolinguals (n=15), English monolinguals(n=13) and Arabic-English (n=14). Temporal sequence reporting tasks created using PC-Ibex are used to assess directionality bias in mental representations of time among participants. Results were analyzed using ANOVAs and show a significant effect of writing direction on mental representations of time in the English monolingual group and the Arabic monolingual group, however, no significant effect was observed among the bilingual group. This shows that both the English and Arabic monolingual groups suffered from interference when faced with the space-time mapping unfamiliar with their writing direction, however, the bilingual results were inconclusive.
