Embodied attention shapes temporal cognition.
Angelo Pisani, Michela Candini, Marinella Cappelletti, Mariano D'Angelo
British Journal of Psychology August 30, 2026 DOI: 10.1111/bjop.70107 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Experimental study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Interventions | Gaze direction Optokinetic stimulation (OKS) |
| Keywords | Embodied cognition Gaze direction Mental time line Mental time travel Optokinetic stimulation Temporal cognition Visuospatial attention |
| Key findings | Gaze direction produced direction-specific effects: leftward gaze increased the perceived likelihood of past events and yielded younger age estimates, while rightward gaze increased judgements for future events and yielded older estimates. Optokinetic stimulation biased age judgements but showed no direction-specific effect on mental time travel. The authors argue that mental time travel depends more on embodied perceptual mechanisms, whereas age-related temporal estimates can be shaped by domain-general attentional processes. |
Abstract
Humans rely on spatial representations to process both temporal duration and mentally project themselves across time. Yet, it remains unclear whether this spatial-temporal mapping depends on embodied mechanisms or on abstract attentional codes. We investigated whether embodied cues (gaze direction) versus abstract cues optokinetic stimulation (OKS) modulate Mental Time Travel (MTT) and age judgement. Gaze direction induced direction-specific effects in both tasks: in MTT leftward gaze enhanced the perceived likelihood of past events, while rightward gaze enhanced judgements for future events; in the Age Judgement task leftward cues yielded younger estimates and rightward cues older estimates. Conversely, non-embodied OKS biased Age Judgements but induced no direction-specific effects in the MTT task. Overall, these dissociations suggest that embodied cues play a specific role in modulating temporal projection in MTT, whereas non-embodied attentional cues are sufficient to bias age-related temporal estimates. These findings suggest that temporal projection during MTT relies more strongly on embodied perceptual mechanisms, whereas judgements of longer temporal durations can be shaped by domain-general attentional processes.