Chen, Jenn-Yeu. (2007) Do Chinese and English Speakers Think About Time Differently

LIN1001 - Week 7C
Chen, Jenn-Yeu. 2007. Do Chinese and English speakers

think about time differently? Failure of replicating
Boroditsky (2001). Cognition, 104(2):427-36.
Cognition 104 (2007) 427–436

www.elsevier.com/locate/COGNIT
Brief article
Do Chinese and English speakers think about

time differently? Failure of replicating
Boroditsky (2001) q,qq
Jenn-Yeu Chen
Institute of Cognitive Science, National Cheng Kung University, 1 University Road, Tainan 701, Taiwan
Received 10 May 2006; revised 19 July 2006; accepted 18 September 2006
Abstract
English uses the horizontal spatial metaphors to express time (e.g., the good days
ahead of us). Chinese also uses the vertical metaphors (e.g., ‘the month above’ to mean
last month). Do Chinese speakers, then, think about time in a different way than Eng-
lish speakers? Boroditsky [Boroditsky, L. (2001). Does language shape thought? Manda-
rin and English speakers’ conceptions of time. Cognitive Psychology, 43(1), 1–22]
claimed that they do, and went on to conclude that ‘language is a powerful tool in
shaping habitual thought about abstract domains’ (such as time). By estimating the fre-
quency of usage, we found that Chinese speakers actually use the horizontal spatial
metaphors more often than the vertical metaphors. This offered no logical ground
for Boroditsky’s claim. We were also unable to replicate her experiments in four differ-
ent attempts. We conclude that Chinese speakers do not think about time in a different
way than English speakers just because Chinese also uses the vertical spatial metaphors
to express time.
2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
q
This manuscript was accepted under the editorship of Jacques Mehler.
qq
This work was sponsored by the NSC-93-2752-H-006-001-PAE grant awarded to the author by the
National Council of Taiwan, ROC. It was carried out by Yi-Tien Tsai as part of the requirement for her
master’s thesis.
E-mail address: psyjyc@mail.ncku.edu.tw
0010-0277/$ - see front matter 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2006.09.012
428 J.-Y. Chen / Cognition 104 (2007) 427–436
Keywords: Linguistic relativity hypothesis; Time; Chinese; English
English uses the horizontal spatial metaphors primarily to express time (e.g.,
‘to look back 30 years’), whereas Chinese also uses the vertical metaphors (e.g.,
‘the month above’ means last month; ‘the day ahead’ means the day before yes-
terday). Will the use of different spatial metaphors affect the way time is concep-
tualized in the language users? Boroditsky (2001) addressed this question with a
spatial priming task. The task first engaged the participants in spatial processing,
followed immediately by sentence judgment that involved the processing of time.
In a typical trial, the participants saw two pictures in a row, each depicting two
objects aligned horizontally or vertically. A sentence appeared at the bottom
describing the spatial relationship of the two objects. The participants had to
determine if the sentence was a correct statement. Following the pictures was
shown a sentence which described the temporal relationship of two time units,
e.g., June comes before May. The participants had to decide too if the sentence
was a correct statement. The sentence used two kinds of words to describe the
temporal relationship, one a spatial metaphor such as before and after, and the
other a time word such as earlier and later. Using the spatial metaphor was
meant to serve as a methodological check of the effectiveness of the priming
procedure. Indeed, both the English and the Chinese participants responded to
the time sentence faster when they had just processed the horizontal relationship
of the objects than the vertical relationship of the objects. The critical test of
the hypothesis came from the participants’ responses to the time sentences which
used the time words. The English participants responded to this kind of sentenc-
es faster when they had just processed the horizontal relationship of the objects,
but the Chinese participants were faster when they had just processed the verti-
cal relationship of the objects. Because the Chinese participants were Chinese–
English bilinguals, and they processed the English sentences in the task, the
findings argued strongly for the point that the use of spatial metaphors could
change the way speakers think about time. The Chinese speakers displayed a
tendency of thinking about time vertically because they talked about time verti-
cally. Such a tendency persisted even when the Chinese speakers processed time
in English.
Boroditsky’s findings were very persuasive, except that an important assump-
tion she made runs against our intuition as a native speaker of Chinese. She
assumed implicitly that Chinese speakers used the vertical metaphors far more
frequently than the horizontal metaphors when expressing time. The assumption
was evident in the way she analyzed and described the data: ‘‘English speakers
answered purely temporal questions faster after horizontal primes than after verti-
cal primes. . . Mandarin speakers were faster after vertical primes than after hor-
izontal primes’’ (p. 10). Unfortunately, she never tested that assumption. Here,
we report a study which tested the assumption (Part 1) and repeated her exper-
iment (Part 2). To anticipate the results, the data of the frequency of usage did
J.-Y. Chen / Cognition 104 (2007) 427–436 429
not support Boroditsky’s assumption. We also could not replicate her experi-
mental findings.
1. Part 1
1.1. Method
We searched the web news in Taiwan for the time expressions. In the first attempt,
we downloaded 100 pieces of news from the Yahoo News Taiwan over four days.
We, then, extracted all the expressions that contained time. The frequencies of the
horizontal spatial terms and the vertical spatial terms were tallied. In the second
attempt, we searched the Google News Taiwan, using the Chinese time words
(day, week, month, season, and year) and the spatial terms (above, below, before,
and after) as the combined keywords. Each search yielded many pieces of news,
so we kept only the first 30.
1.2. Results
The results from the Yahoo search (Table 1) showed that the number of time
expressions using the horizontal spatial terms exceeded the number using the vertical
spatial terms (250 vs. 122). We assumed that the news had been drawn from a single
sample and so performed a v2 analysis of the frequency distribution. The result was
significant: v2(1) = 44, p < .0001. We have also performed a matched-sample t-test as
well as a sign test, treating each news piece as the unit of analysis. The results of both
tests were consistent with that of the v2 analysis: for the t-test, t(99) = 4.38,
p < .0001; for the sign test, 57 out of 100 news pieces used more horizontal meta-
phors than vertical metaphors, 29 showed the opposite, and 14 had a tie, z = 2.91,
p < .005.
The Google search yielded similar results (Table 2). Here, we applied the v2 tests
only. Overall, the time units were expressed with a horizontal metaphor more often
than with a vertical metaphor: v2(1) = 33, p < .0001. Time of event (e.g., before the
moon disappeared) was the major contributor of the horizontal bias. However, when
time of event had been removed, the horizontal bias remained significant: 58% vs.
42%, v2(1) = 11, p < .0008. We also contrasted the usage patterns for week and other
time units (excluding time of event). The patterns were opposite: v2(1) = 24.8,
p < .0001, with week showing a vertical bias (56% over 44%) while other time units
showing a horizontal bias (68% over 32%).
Table 1
Number of time expressions using the horizontal and the vertical spatial terms from searching the Yahoo
News Taiwan
Before After Sum of horizontal Above Below Sum of vertical
123 127 250 70 52 122
Table 2
Number of time expressions using the horizontal and the vertical spatial terms from searching the Google
News Taiwan
Before After Sum of horizontal Above Below Sum of vertical
Day 38 22 60 3 1 4
Week 38 44 82 63 40 103
Month 25 30 55 21 23 44
Year 11 7 18 7 10 17
Season 19 19 38 6 9 15
Event 54 53 107 25 13 38
Total 185 175 360 125 96 221
1.3. Discussion
We searched the Yahoo and the Google News Taiwan to estimate the frequency
of use of the horizontal and the vertical spatial metaphors when Chinese people
expressed time. The results from both rounds of search showed clearly that the hor-
izontal spatial metaphors were used more frequently than the vertical spatial meta-
phors (except for the time unit ‘week’). Thus, Boroditsky’s assumption cannot be
justified. We, then, went on to repeat her experiment. A total of four experiments
were conducted, all following the basic design and procedure of her study. The
experiments were programmed in DMDX (developed at the University of Arizona
by K. I. Forster and J. C. Forster) and conducted on a personal computer with a
Pentium-III 667 Hz microprocessor and a 15-inch LCD monitor.
2. Part 2
2.1. Experiment 1
2.1.1. Method
Twenty-five Chinese–English bilinguals from the Department of Foreign Lan-
guages, National Cheng Kung University participated. They were graduate students
or at least in their undergraduate sophomore year, with an English major. Fourteen
native speakers of English who taught English in Tainan City also participated. All
of them were paid for participation.
There were 128 pictures serving as the primes. Half depicted a horizontal rela-
tion of two objects, while the other half the vertical relation. At the bottom of
each picture was a sentence, which described the spatial relation of the objects
using the horizontal (ahead of or behind) or the vertical (above or below) spatial
metaphors.
There were 32 target sentences, each depicting a time relation. Half were true,
while the other half were false. Within each half, eight sentences used before/after
to describe the time relation (e.g., Monday is before Wednesday), and eight used ear-
lier/later. The time units used in the sentences included week days, months, and
seasons.
A trial consisted of two prime pictures followed by a target sentence. The two
prime pictures depicted similar spatial relations (both horizontal or both vertical).
The first one always gave a FALSE answer, while the second one always a TRUE
answer. The target sentence was sometimes TRUE and sometime FALSE, and
was randomly arranged. The participants responded by pressing one of two keys
to indicate TRUE or FALSE. Response times were measured to the accuracy of mil-
liseconds by the computer. All the sentences and the instructions were presented in
English. The trial started with the presentation of four pound signs (####) serving
as a fixation mark. The participants pressed the space bar to initiate the trial. The
two prime pictures and the one target sentence followed one after another in that
sequence upon the participants’ keypress responses. The experiment had a within-
subject 2 (prime type) · 2 (target type) · 3 (time unit) design.
2.1.2. Results and discussion

The statistical analysis focused on the TRUE target sentences. Outliers
(RTs > 6000 ms) and errors constituted 3% and 6% of the trials. Table 3 shows that
the participants were slower (but not significantly) when the target sentence followed
a horizontal prime than a vertical prime. This was the case regardless of the type of
target, the time unit, and the native language. Detailed results of the analysis of var-
Table 3
Mean response time (in ms) and its standard deviation (SD) as a function of prime type (H, horizontal; V,
vertical), target type (before/after, earlier/later), and time unit (day, month, and season) from Experiment
1
Mean RT (SD) Difference of V–H p of t-test
H V
Chinese participants
Before/after Day 3053 (799) 2939 (711) 114 .442
Month 3219 (827) 2996 (727) 223 .108
Season 2780 (980) 2677 (964) 103 .669
All 3017 (879) 2870 (810) 147 .238
Earlier/later Day 3353 (822) 3368 (820) 15 .922
Month 3194 (818) 3103 (802) 91 .516
Season 3017 (782) 2987 (826) 30 .857
All 3188 (808) 3152 (821) 36 .759
English participants
Before/after Day 2461 (905) 2162 (544) 299 .177
Month 2326 (652) 2574 (517) 248 .112
Season 2196 (381) 2444 (498) 248 .083
All 2328 (672) 2393 (536) 65 .527
Month 2464 (789) 2654 (664) 190 .164
Season 2937 (768) 2365 (583) 572 .006
All 2621 (828) 2462 (696) 159 .130
The p values of the matched-sample t-tests comparing the horizontal and vertical RTs are also shown.
iance (for all experiments) are available in the supplementary items. Table 3 (as well
as Tables 4–6) also presents the results of the individual t-tests contrasting the hor-
izontal RTs with the vertical RTs for different languages, target types and time units.
The results, which were inconsistent with Boroditsky’s (2001) findings, suggested
that the paradigm of spatial priming did not work in our experiment. This could
mean some problems in the way we followed the design and the procedure of Boro-
ditsky’s experiment. But, it could also be a true failure of replication. Before drawing
any conclusion, we conducted Experiment 2 with the same method, but using the
Chinese–English bilinguals and changing the language of the experiment (instruc-
tions and the sentences) into Chinese. The reason for the modification was to max-
imize the condition for observing a vertical bias in the Chinese speakers. If the
Chinese speakers think about time vertically when they process an English sentence,
they must display an even stronger vertical bias when they process a Chinese sen-
tence. If Experiment 2 also failed to replicate Boroditsky’s findings, perhaps we
had not done the experiments grossly differently from the way she did hers.
2.2. Experiment 2
2.2.1. Method
Twenty Chinese–English bilinguals were recruited from the student population of
the National Cheng Kung University, with no special requirement on English profi-
ciency. The design and the procedure were similar to those of Experiment 1, except
that all the sentences were presented in Chinese, and so were the instructions.

Outliers (RTs > 5000 ms) and errors constituted 2% and 7% of the trials. Table 4
shows the participants responded more slowly (again insignificantly) when the target
sentence followed a horizontal prime than a vertical prime regardless of the type of
target, the time unit, and the native language. Thus, the replication failed again. We
Table 4
vertical), target type (before/after, earlier/later), and time unit (day, month, and season) from Experiment
2
H V
Before/after Day 2198 (847) 1908 (593) 290 .042
Month 2060 (866) 1763 (503) 297 .101
Season 2158 (706) 2138 (738) 20 .918
All 2139 (798) 1937 (628) 202 .120
Month 1735 (511) 1743 (662) 8 .955
Season 2099 (623) 1881 (686) 218 .039
All 1948 (599) 1816 (653) 132 .213
Table 5
vertical), target type (before/after, earlier/later), and time unit (day, month, and season) from Experiment 3
H V
Before/after Day 1579 (415) 1559 (441) 20 .312
Month 1426 (371) 1326 (217) 100 .631
Season 1534 (242) 1462 (555) 72 .535
All 1513 (344) 1449 (424) 64 .292
Month 1347 (302) 1474 (369) 127 .844
Season 1812 (526) 1765 (537) 47 .692
All 1579 (419) 1575 (438) 4 .978
Table 6
vertical), target type (before/after, earlier/later), and time unit (day, month, and season) from Experiment 4
H V
Before/after Day 1947 (634) 2085 (841) 138 .506
Month 1907 (618) 1937 (976) 30 .880
Season 2018 (750) 1970 (659) 48 .756
All 1957 (659) 1997 (822) 40 .755
Month 1721 (490) 1622 (530) 99 .492
Season 1982 (576) 2018 (684) 36 .791
All 1869 (597) 1804 (649) 65 .531
conducted Experiment 3 to rule out a potential methodological flaw in the previous

experiments.
2.3. Experiment 3
2.3.1. Method
One possible explanation of why the response times tended to be slightly longer
when the target sentences followed the horizontal primes than the vertical primes
is that there was no delay between the response to the second prime picture and
the presentation of the target sentence. Because the horizontal pictures tended to
be harder to process than the vertical pictures (as verified by a separate analysis of
their corresponding response times), the participants might still be pondering about
their response to the horizontal picture when the target sentence appeared. This
would have caused a delay in their response to the target sentence.
To avoid this, we inserted the pound sign before every prime picture and every
target sentence. The participants needed to press the space bar to receive the picture
or the sentence. The experiment continued to use Chinese participants (N = 10, sim-
ilarly recruited as in Experiment 2) and Chinese sentences and instructions.

The average proportions of outliers (RTs > 4000 ms) and errors were 0.5% and
4%. The results shown in Table 5 display a similar pattern to those of Experiments
1 and 2. Thus, having ruled out the potential methodological problem, Experiment 3
still failed to replicate Boroditsky’s (2001) results.
2.4. Experiment 4
2.4.1. Method
In the last experiment, we rearranged the two objects in the horizontal pictures so
that they were aligned vertically. Two approaching lines extending from bottom to
top bordered the two objects so that the one at the top appeared in the front and
the one at the bottom appeared in the back (the linear perspective). This arrange-
ment made the horizontal pictures more comparable to the vertical pictures in terms
of the visual angles. The rest of the method was the same as that of Experiment 2 and
3. Eighteen Chinese participants were recruited from the same subject pool.
2.4.2. Results
The average proportions of outliers (RTs > 5000 ms) and errors were 1.5% and
8%. As Table 6 shows, although there were some conditions in which the response
times were faster when the target sentences followed the horizontal pictures, overall
they were not. The only significant effects were the main effect of target type and the
main effect of time unit. The main effect of prime type was not significant; neither
were the interactions, involving this factor.
3. General discussion
Boroditsky (2001) observed that whereas English monolinguals tended to think

about time horizontally, Chinese–English bilinguals tended to think about time ver-
tically even when they did it in English. She attributed this vertical bias in the Chi-
nese–English bilinguals to the fact that the Chinese language uses the vertical spatial
metaphors (in addition to the horizontal metaphor) to express time, while the Eng-
lish language uses only the horizontal metaphors. The author concluded that the lan-
guage one uses can have a profound effect on one’s habitual thinking.
We found that the use of the horizontal spatial metaphors in Chinese to express
time was actually more frequent than the use of the vertical spatial metaphors. More-
over, we were unable, in four attempts, to replicate the results of Boroditsky’s exper-
iment. The effect sizes of the vertical bias with respect to the earlier/later questions
for the Chinese participants were generally small so that extremely large sample sizes
would have been required to detect them with a reasonable power (see Table 7). The
English participants displayed a much larger effect size, but in the direction opposite
to Boroditsky’s prediction.
It may appear to the readers that despite the null results of the statistical analyses,
our Chinese data seem to present a trend that is consistent with Boroditsky’s predic-
tion. This impression is not supported by a careful examination of the relevant data.
The trend is there only when different time units are lumped together. But, since time
unit is clearly a critical variable here, it is inappropriate to combine the data across
time units. If we focus on ‘month,’ the time unit that was used in Boroditsky (2001),
we find that Experiments 1 and 4 displayed a trend of vertical bias, while Experi-
ments 2 and 3 displayed a trend of horizontal bias. Thus, our data, when examined
with care, cannot be taken as consistent with Boroditsky’s predition.
There was a concern that our participants might not have processed the primes
because the answers fell in a fixed pattern. This could explain our null results of spa-
tial priming. We ran an analysis of the error rates and the RTs of the participants’
responses to the prime questions. The error rates were, on the average, comparable
or higher for the prime questions than for the target questions. The RTs were also on
the average longer for the primes than for the targets (see Table 8). If the fixed pat-
tern of the answers for the prime questions had encouraged the participants to skip
processing the primes, the error rates would have been close to zero, and the reaction
Table 7
The results of the power analysis testing the vertical bias for the earlier/later questions
Initial sample size Effect size Power (%) Required sample size
to achieve 80% power
Experiment 1 Chinese 25 0.062 4.6 2050
English 14 0.432 29.8 45
Experiment 2 20 0.288 21.6 97
Experiment 3 10 0.009 2.6 100000
Experiment 4 18 0.151 8.0 350
The effect size is the standardized mean difference of the vertical RT minus the horizontal RT, which
represents the vertical bias. The alpha level of the significance test was set at .05.
Table 8
Error rates and the mean RTs for the primes and the targets
Error rate Mean RT
Prime 1 Prime 2 Target Prime 1 Prime 2 Target
Experiment 1 Chinese 0.37 0.32 0.06 3278 2929 3114
English 0.05 0.03 0.06 2998 2364 2639
Experiment 2 0.14 0.12 0.07 2456 2204 1990
Experiment 3 0.04 0.05 0.04 2075 1901 1553
Experiment 4 0.15 0.15 0.06 2802 2464 1953
times would have been much shorter. Thus, there is no indication that the partici-
pants in our study skipped processing the prime questions.
In sum, the two parts of the study led us to conclude that Chinese speakers do not
conceptualize time differently than English speakers. This conclusion, however, must
be limited to the way time is expressed spatially. Whether Chinese and English
speakers might differ in other ways of conceptualizing time remains an open ques-
tion; so does the linguistic relativity claim.
One lesson that must be learned from this investigation and Boroditsky’s is that
researchers can reach erroneous conclusions when they examine a cross-language
issue but do not have competent knowledge about the languages they examine.
The controversy over the issue of counterfactual reasoning serves as a case in point
(Au, 1983; Bloom, 1981). Collaborations, involving native speakers in this type of
research are strongly advised.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online ver-
sion, at doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2006.09.012.
References
Au, T. K-F. (1983). Chinese and English counterfactuals: the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis revised. Cognition,
15, 155–187.
Bloom, A. H. (1981). The linguistic shaping of thought: A study in the impact of language on thinking in
China and the west. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Boroditsky, L. (2001). Does language shape thought? Mandarin and English speakers’ conceptions of
time. Cognitive Psychology, 43(1), 1–22.

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LIN1001 - Week 7C

Chen, Jenn-Yeu. 2007. Do Chinese and English speakers

Cognition 104 (2007) 427–436

Do Chinese and English speakers think about

Received 10 May 2006; revised 19 July 2006; accepted 18 September 2006

Keywords: Linguistic relativity hypothesis; Time; Chinese; English

2.1.2. Results and discussion

2.2.2. Results and discussion

conducted Experiment 3 to rule out a potential methodological ﬂaw in the previous

2.3.2. Results and discussion

Boroditsky (2001) observed that whereas English monolinguals tended to think

Appendix A. Supplementary data

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