Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

People often use spatial language to talk about time, and thisis known to both reflect and shape how they think about it.Despite much research on the spatial grounding of temporallanguage and thought, little attention has been given to howspatial metaphors influence reasoning about real events,especially those in the future. In a large online study(N=2362), we framed a discussion of climate change usingspatial metaphors that varied on reference-frame (ego- vs.time-moving), speed of movement (fast vs. slow), and timehorizon (near, medium, or far future). We found thatdescribing climate change as approaching (time-movingframe) – versus something we approach – made the issueseem more serious, but also more tractable, at least when therate of motion was fast (e.g., “it’s rapidly approaching”).These findings offer novel insights into the relationshipbetween spatial metaphors and temporal reasoning and howwe communicate about uncertain future events.