Language and spatial cognition

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article is written like a personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (February 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (February 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The question whether the use of language influences

, what these imply, and the exploration of potentially partaking cognitive mechanisms.

Frames of reference across cultures

Research shows that frames of reference for spatial cognition differ across cultures and that language could play a crucial role in structuring these different frames.^[1] Three types of perspectives on space can be distinguished:^[1]

• The Relative perspective (dominant in Dutch, English, and Japanese) is dependent on the viewer's position towards the object and often uses descriptions like "the object is to the left/right of ...".
• The Absolute perspective (found in speakers of
  Kuuk Thaayore, and Tzeltal
  ) is based on cardinal directions such as north, east, south, and west. Therefore, the description of the location of an object does not change according to the position towards it.
• The Intrinsic perspective (found in speakers of Mopan and Totonac) describes the location of an object without referring to yourself or the use of cardinal directions. Instead it uses the relation towards another object to specify spatial relations (e.g. "the object is at the back/front/side of ...").

Languages like English or Dutch do not exclusively make use of relative descriptions but these appear to be most frequent compared to intrinsic or absolute descriptions. An absolute frame of reference is usually restricted to large scale geographical descriptions in these languages. Speakers of the

The relative and intrinsic perspectives seem to be connected as there is no known language which applies only one of these frames of reference exclusively.[2]^[3]

Two views on spatial cognition

(1.) It has been argued that people universally use an

(2.) Other researchers have proposed that people apply multiple frames of reference during their daily lives and that languages reflect these cognitive structures.[5] In the light of the current body of literature the second view seems to be the more plausible one.^[2][6][7][8]

Directional gestures

The dominant frames of reference have found to be reflected in the common types of

The spatial representation of time

A study by Boroditsky and Gaby[14] compared speakers of an absolute language—Pormpuraawans—with English speakers. The task on which they compared them consisted of the spatial arrangement of cards which showed a temporal progression. The result was that the speakers of the relative language (Americans) exclusively chose to represent time spatially as progressing from left (earlier time) to right (later time). Whereas the Pormpuraawans took the direction they faced into account and preferred to depict time as progressing from east (earlier time) to west (later time) the most.

Third variables

could potentially explain a significant proportion of the measured difference in performance between the linguistic frames of reference. These can be categorized into three types of confounding factors:

• Environmental factors (e.g. rural vs. urban or open terrain vs. dense forest) could influence linguistic and non-linguistic categories.^[15][16]
• Global cognitive styles (e.g.
  collectivism) could act as a mediator between language and cognition.^[17]
• Differences in habitual action (could be reflected in subsistence patterns) might shape the differing use of frames of reference in language and cognition.[18]

The importance of language for cognition

Gentner, Özyürek, Gürcanli, and Goldin-Meadow^[19] found that deaf children, who lacked a conventional language, did not use gestures to convey spatial relations (see home sign). Building on that, they showed that deaf children performed significantly worse on a task of spatial cognition compared to hearing children. They concluded that the acquisition of (spatial) language is an important factor in shaping spatial cognition.

Cognitive mechanisms

Several mechanisms accounting for or contributing to the possible effect of language on cognition have been suggested:

• Perceptual tuning and attention: Experience (with language) can direct habitual attention so that perception becomes more oriented towards particular features in the environment.^[20][21]
• The novice-expert shift: Increased experience in a specific domain can lead to a recoding of representational units.^[22][23]
• Structure-mapping: When comparing conceptual representations based on similarities, language can influence what tends to be compared to what, by promoting the saliency of specific categories.^[24][25]
• Costs of computation: Based on the assumption of language promoting the formation of different categories, it would result that the cognitive effort to access the more salient frame of reference in the respective language (relative, absolute or intrinsic) is lower in comparison to switching to another frame.^[2][26]

See also

• Barbara Landau § Relationship between spatial language and spatial cognition

References