Balinese Spatial Orientation: Some Empirical Evidence of Moderate Linguistic Relativity

Wassmann, Jürg; Dasen, Pierre R.

doi:10.2307/3034828

Cited by 104 publications

(89 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…There is cross-lingual evidence to support the Whorfian hypothesis in the number domain 40 , in space 41,42 , time 43 and even speech perception 44 . There is also much evidence that language and cognition interact: children readily extend new words and assume words have a common referent.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

Language and perceptual categorisation

Davidoff

2001

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

110

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

Language and perceptual categorisation

Davidoff

2001

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

110

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“…Several potential sources have been proposed, such as group cohesion or lifestyle (21), context (21,25), and language (16,17). The largest and strongest body of evidence supports the latter theory (4,5,16,18,19), which proposes that cognitive categories and concepts are not necessarily universal but potentially variable and seem to align with cross-linguistically variable semantics. To communicate about space, in a way appropriate within a linguistic community, cognitive representations need to be aligned with habitual linguistic categories so that information is coded appropriately for later linguistic use.…”

Section: Part 1: Cross-cultural Variationmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…Second, the relevant linguistic spatial relational constructions may be expected to be learned later by children. Again, the evidence suggests that this is correct: Children in cultures where absolute coding is predominant seem to master this system as early as 4 and certainly by 7 years of age (18,23,38), whereas children in relative-coding cultures do not seem to master full use of the left͞right systems until Ϸ11 years of age (24,37).…”

Section: Part 2: Phylogenetic Inheritancementioning

confidence: 94%

“…Continuing investigations into the cognition of speakers of absolute languages suggest that they prefer absolute (geocentric) to relative (egocentric) strategies in simple nonlinguistic spatial memory tasks, whereas the reverse is found in European speakers of predominantly relative languages, such as English or Dutch (4,5,(16)(17)(18)(19); for a critique, see refs. 20 and 21.…”

Section: Part 1: Cross-cultural Variationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cognitive cladistics and cultural override in Hominid spatial cognition

Haun

Rapold

Call

et al. 2006

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

180

148

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Current approaches to human cognition often take a strong nativist stance based on Western adult performance, backed up where possible by neonate and infant research and almost never by comparative research across the Hominidae. Recent research suggests considerable cross-cultural differences in cognitive strategies, including relational thinking, a domain where infant research is impossible because of lack of cognitive maturation. Here, we apply the same paradigm across children and adults of different cultures and across all nonhuman great ape genera. We find that both child and adult spatial cognition systematically varies with language and culture but that, nevertheless, there is a clear inherited bias for one spatial strategy in the great apes. It is reasonable to conclude, we argue, that language and culture mask the native tendencies in our species. This cladistic approach suggests that the correct perspective on human cognition is neither nativist uniformitarian nor ''blank slate'' but recognizes the powerful impact that language and culture can have on our shared primate cognitive biases. cognitive evolution ͉ cultural differences ͉ great apes

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“…2 Instead, these peoples express all directions in terms of cardinal directions, a bit like our 'East', 'West', etc. Careful investigation of their non-linguistic coding for recall, recognition, and inference, together with investigations of their deadreckoning abilities and their on-line gesture during talk, shows that these people think the way they speak, that is, they code for memory, inference, way-finding, gesture and so on in 'absolute' fixed coordinates, not 'relative' or egocentric ones (the full details can be found in Levinson (in press), but the studies are now being replicated across the world by other scholars; see, for example, Wassmann and Dasen (1998)). The phenomenon should be of fundamental interest to cognitive science as showing human variability where least expected, and should not be lost sight of in disagreements about its correct interpretation.…”

Section: Language and Thought In The Spatial Domainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Returning the tables: language affects spatial reasoning

et al. 2002

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Li and Gleitman (Turning the tables: language and spatial reasoning. Cognition, in press) seek to undermine a large-scale cross-cultural comparison of spatial language and cognition which claims to have demonstrated that language and conceptual coding in the spatial domain covary (see, for example, Space in language and cognition: explorations in linguistic diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press; Language 74 (1998) 557): the most plausible interpretation is that different languages induce distinct conceptual codings. Arguing against this, Li and Gleitman attempt to show that in an American student population they can obtain any of the relevant conceptual codings just by varying spatial cues, holding language constant. They then argue that our findings are better interpreted in terms of ecologically-induced distinct cognitive styles reflected in language. Linguistic coding, they argue, has no causal effects on non-linguistic thinking -it simply reflects antecedently existing conceptual distinctions. We here show that Li and Gleitman did not make a crucial distinction between frames of spatial reference relevant to our line of research. We report a series of experiments designed to show that they have, as a consequence, misinterpreted the results of their own experiments, which are in fact in line with our hypothesis. Their attempts to reinterpret the large cross-cultural study, and to enlist support from animal and infant studies, fail for the same reasons. We further try to discern exactly what theory drives their presumption that language can have no cognitive efficacy, and conclude that their position is undermined by a wide range of considerations. q 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Language and thought in the spatial domainThere seem to be two main currents of speculation about the relationship between linguistic systems and other conceptual systems. One line assumes that language is merely an input/output system for an innately grounded 'language of thought', so that a language either directly reflects an antecedently available pool of universal concepts (Fodor, 1975) or it builds on a rich, core set of 'natural' concepts constituting a universal conceptual base (Landau & Jackendoff, 1993;Pinker, 1994). 1 The other, noting that language is a human prerogative, suggests that the possession of language in general, and specific languages in particular, may reorganize and restructure the underlying cognition even in domains such as space that have been considered 'natural' and 'universal'. The role of language in restructuring thought may then account for some of the special properties of human thinking (Dennett, 1991; Lucy, 1992a;Spelke & Tsivkin, 2001).There has been a recent resurgence of interest in this second possibility (see, for example, Bowerman & Levinson, 2001; Gentner & Goldin-Meadow, in press). Our own work has been dedicated to exploring this possibility empirically in the spatial domain. Spatial thinking is essential to any animal, and it is a domain w...

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Balinese Spatial Orientation: Some Empirical Evidence of Moderate Linguistic Relativity

Cited by 104 publications

References 31 publications

Language and perceptual categorisation

Language and perceptual categorisation

Cognitive cladistics and cultural override in Hominid spatial cognition

Returning the tables: language affects spatial reasoning

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