Where Are the Months? Mental Images of Circular Time in a Large Online Sample

Abstract

People may think about time by mentally imaging it in some spatial form, or as "spacetime." In an online survey, 76,922 Norwegian individuals positioned two dots corresponding to the months of December and March on what they imagined to be their appropriate places on a circle. The majority of respondents placed December within a section of the circumference ranging from 11:00 to 12:00 o'clock, but a group of respondents chose positions around the diametrically opposite 6:00 o'clock position. A similar relationship occurred for March, where most respondents chose a position ranging from 2:30 to 3:00 o'clock but a group of respondents chose positions around 9:00 o'clock. About half of the respondents (N = 39,797) continued to fill out an online questionnaire probing their mental images related to the "year" concept. This clarified that 75% of respondents "saw" the months unfolding in a clockwise direction versus 19% in a counter clockwise fashion. Moreover, while a majority (70%) stated that they imagined the year as a "circle," the rest indicated the use of other mental images (e.g., ellipses and spirals, lines and squares, idiosyncratic or synesthetic spatial forms). We found only weak effects or preferences for spatial forms based on respondents' gender, handedness, age, or geographical location.

Keywords: imagery; mental models; motion; spatialization; synesthesia; time.

Figure 1

Wheel diagram of 76,922 placements of the months of December (left blue diagram) and March (right red diagram) on the circumference of an empty circle. Graphics realized by Henrik Lied at NRKbeta.

Figure 2

Wheel diagram of 76,922 placements of the months of December (blue graph) and March (red graph) on the circumference of an empty circle. The digits around the circle correspond to the closest minutes’ positions on a clock face and the concentric circles represent frequency rates of selection for a position in steps of 500 clicks.

Figure 3

Pie chart of proportions of individuals who indicated a particular shape corresponding to the mental image of the year.

Figure 4

Violin boxplots of the naturalness of “seeing” the year as a “circle” in individuals who had chosen different shapes (x-axis) as their preferred spatial models.

Figure 5

Proportion of respondents choosing opposite direction of time on the year’s wheel. Graphics by Vidar Kvien, NRK.

Figure 6

Image sent by one of our respondents, indicating a highly idiosyncratic spatial organization of the year’s months (in Norwegian) superimposed onto a familiar landscape. Illustration by Ola Hansen/Algkalv CC BY 3.0.

Figure 7

Drawings submitted by survey respondents illustrating their “calendar synesthesia” where the year is a ring or wheel oriented at a specified angle and elevation in relation to the synesthete (left panel) and for one who reports specific colors for each segment of the “year ring.”