It is a fundamental feature of human cognition to understand the abstract concept of time through space. As far as the direction of metaphorical mapping is concerned, space-time mappings in the 'front-back' direction are the most common. At present, most studies have confirmed the psychological reality of spatiotemporal mapping. However, research on implicit space-time mapping in mental thinking and its influencing factors are still controversial. The Temporal Focus Hypothesis (TFH) holds that language is not the only factor affecting the implicit space-time mapping, and that the attention individuals pay to past or future time, namely, Temporal Focus, is the key factor shaping the implicit space-time mapping. Temporal focus refers to the extent to which individuals allocate their attention to past, present and future time periods, and is influenced by a variety of factors such as culture, individual differences, and cognitive training. Life history strategy is a stable pattern of psychological behavior. It is a variable belonging to the category of individual differences. This study builds on existing research by introducing life history strategies, which are stable patterns of mental behavior that individuals develop through trade-offs in order to survive and adapt, and are variables that fall under the category of individual differences. Those with a slow life history strategy attach more importance to events related to the future and show a preference for "future thinking", while those with a fast life history strategy focus on the present and have no obvious preference for "future thinking" or "past thinking". This study adopts a time-focus questionnaire, a time-diagramming task and a time-word categorization task to explore the temporal focus and implicit temporal mapping preferences of subjects with different life history strategies, and the effects of life history strategies and time-focus on implicit temporal mapping. In this paper, we examine the temporal focus and implicit temporal mapping preferences of individuals with different life-history strategies, and further verify the stability and applicable boundary conditions of the temporal focus hypothesis through three studies. In Study 1, the Life History Strategy Questionnaire and Time Focus Scale were used to explore the relationship between life history strategy and time focus. Study 2 explored the relationship between life history strategy type and implicit temporal mapping direction using a temporal diagramming task and a temporal word decision task, respectively. Experiment 3 further tested the stability of the temporal focus hypothesis by initiating different temporal focus in individuals with fast and slow life history strategies. The results showed that the fast-strategy subjects had no obvious preference for temporal focus and implicit temporal mapping, while the slow-strategy subjects preferred future temporal focus and "future-front, past-back" implicit temporal mapping associations. The intervention of temporal focus shaped the implicit space-time mappings direction of fast-strategic individuals with a metaphorical consistency effect, whereas for slow-strategic subjects, the intervention had a limited effect. The entire study demonstrates that life history strategies can influence temporal focus and implicit space-time mapping from an evolutionary adaptive perspective. And the temporal focus hypothesis has boundary conditions.
