Forward/backward spatial compatibility in environmental concept processing: an action compatibility study with Chinese-English bilinguals

Abstract

This study investigated whether Chinese-English bilinguals show forward/backward action compatibility effects when processing environmental concepts in their first language (Chinese) and second language (English). Fifty-two unbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals categorized environmental protection and environmental pollution words while making forward or backward joystick movements in compatible and incompatible conditions. The results showed a significant overall compatibility advantage, with faster responses in compatible than incompatible conditions. Chinese words were processed faster overall than English words, reflecting an L1 processing advantage. However, the compatibility effect did not significantly differ between Chinese and English, suggesting a similar action compatibility pattern across the two languages. Additional analyses showed that the overall compatibility advantage remained after controlling for emotional valence and arousal, although both affective variables also predicted response latencies. A corpus-based co-occurrence analysis further suggested that distributional language experience may partly contribute to environmental-spatial associations. These findings indicate that bilinguals’ processing of environmental concepts is sensitive to forward/backward spatial compatibility, but this sensitivity likely reflects the joint contribution of spatial association, affective evaluation, and distributional language experience rather than a purely metaphorical mapping.