Abstract: Abstract Does the spatial-temporal association of response codes ( STEARC ) effect affected by subjective temporal characteristics? In this study, we investigate whether temporal focus is one of the influencing factors of STEARC effect. Results of spatial-temporal metaphor refer that there’s a left-to-right mental time line in our mind. However, studies have found that the pattern and the direction of this effect could be influenced by cultural features (mainly read and writing direction) or experimental conditions (by priming tasks). In another word, the STEARC effects are not the same as each other in the performance of people with different reading/writing directions or in different experimental priming conditions. Recently, researches proposed and supported a temporal-focus hypothesis: People should conceptualize either the future or the past as in front of them to the extent that their culture (or temporal personality divided by old and young) is future oriented or past oriented. Hence, we made an attempt to investigate whether participants with different temporal focus, but in common culture and age group, could also show a different response in the left-right horizontal axis of STEARC effect. Or other, this research assumed that STEARC effect could be affected by individuals’ different temporal focus. The Temporal Focus Scale (TFS) was used to divide the participants into two groups, temporal focus towards the past and focus towards the future. And after this step, a total of 49 undergraduates and graduate students (25 focus towards the past, 24 focus towards the future ) were qualified to participate the modified response-discrimination paradigm experiment. In this experiment, participants were asked to response, by pressing the key ( “P” or ”Q” ) on the computer keyboard, to both different locus of a point and different meanings of temporal words. A total of 42 temporal words of Chinese were used, half of them referring to past time and the other half referring to future time. The experiment was conducted with a 2 (point location: left/right) × 2 (temporal reference: past/future) × 2 ( temporal focus: past/future ) between-subject design, to examine whether people with different temporal focus would show a different pattern of temporal-spatial representation. The assume was that responses were faster when the test requirements were consistent with individuals’ temporal focus, whereas it may took a respectively longer response time if the experimental conditions were disaccord to their temporal focus. The results show that the diversity on the STEARC effect was observed by distinguishing participants into different temporal focus. Persons with temporal focus towards the past judged faster to “ left / past” , and persons with temporal focus towards the future responded faster to “ right / future ”. Different levels of attention allocation may be the reason that temporal focus could influent our temporal-spatial metaphor. And this co-processing pattern between STEARC effect and temporal focus conforms to the Coherent Working Models. In conclusion, these findings provide evidence that the temporal-focus hypothesis between time and space observed in fore-behind axis also exists in left-right axis of STEARC effect. Based on relevant literatures, there are many other factors affecting the temporal-spatial metaphor. Thus, in the future, both objective and subjective conditions of experiments on temporal representation should be better controlled.

Key words: Key words：STEARC effect, temporal focus, attention allocation

摘要： 摘 要 本研究旨在探讨时间关注特征对空间-时间反应编码联合效应的影响。采用时间关注点量表将有效被试分为关注过去组和关注未来组，进行反应区分实验。实验代表过去或未来的时间词作为启动刺激，要求被试判断的目标刺激是随后出现在屏幕左或右侧的圆点。结果发现，关注过去的个体对“左/过去词”的反应更快，关注未来的个体对“右/未来词”反应更快。表明时间关注点影响人们的空间-时间联合编码效应，不同的时间关注点产生人们对于过去和未来时间在注意分配上的差异，从而表现出不同的空间表征方式，在“左-右”水平轴上验证了时间关注点假设。

关键词: 关键词：空间-时间反应编码联合效应, 时间关注点, 注意分配