Mental Time Line Distortion in Right-Brain-Damaged Patients: Evidence From a Dynamic Spatiotemporal Task

Time is an elusive phenomenon that is difficult to grasp with our senses. Recent work has shown how spatial representations often lie beneath temporal ones, as shown by a family of spatiotemporal congruency effects. For instance, individuals who have been exposed to left-to-right orthographic systems are better at judging short durations with their left effector and long durations with their right effector than vice versa, a phenomenon known as the spatial-temporal association of response codes (STEARC) effect. In the present neuropsychological study, we aimed to provide evidence that spatial attention mechanisms play a crucial role in generating this spatially organized mental time line.