title: Being (un)moved by mental time travel.
abstract: Mental imagery of events in the past or future, and of unpleasant or pleasant events, has been found to lead to spontaneous backward/forward bodily motions. Both time and emotion are represented along a spatial continuum, and activation of these representations seems to be simulated in spontaneous changes in body posture. We performed a conceptual replication and extension of an earlier study by Miles, Nind, and Macrae (2010) who reported clear postural effects when thinking of the past and the future. We additionally tested whether changes in posture appear when thinking of an emotional event. Volunteers engaged in mental imagery, involving combinations of time intervals and emotions. We simultaneously recorded center-of-pressure (COP) changes. Results revealed neither an effect of imagery of time nor of emotion on body posture. We conclude that embodied effects of imagery of abstract items on body posture may be less robust than suggested by previous literature.
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Movement Sciences, Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, MOVE Research Institute Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Electronic address: j.f.stins@vu.nl.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Stins
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Movement Sciences, Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, MOVE Research Institute Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Habets
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Movement Sciences, Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, MOVE Research Institute Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Rowie
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Jongeling
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Movement Sciences, Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, MOVE Research Institute Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Rouwen
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cañal-Bruland
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D011187:Posture / Q000502:physiology*; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Embodied cognition; Emotion; Mental imagery; Postural control