The effects of direction and orientation of located objects on spatial language comprehension

Abstract

Spatial descriptions such as “The spider isbehindthe bee” inform the listener about the location of the spider (the located object) in relation to an object whose location is known (i.e., the bee, also called the reference object). If the geometric properties of the reference object have been shown to affect how people use and understand spatial language (Carlson & Van Deman, 2008; Carlson-Radvansky & Irwin, 1994), the geometric features carried by the located object have been deemed irrelevant for spatial language (Landau, 1996; Talmy, 1983). This view on the (ir)relevance of the located object has been recently questioned by works showing that presenting the located object in misalignment with the reference object has consequences for spatial language understanding (Burigo, Coventry, Cangelosi, & Lynott, 2016; Burigo & Sacchi, 2013). In the reported study we aimed to investigate which geometric properties of the located object affect the apprehension of a spatial description, and to disentangle whether the information concerning its orientation (axis), direction (front/rear), or a combination of the two gives rise to conflict. The outcomes of three placing tasks suggest that only the information concerning the direction of the located object is critical for spatial language use.

Early spatial language development and education: a scoping review

“…Different language speakers worldwide might have different preferences in using FoRs, thus providing a suitable scene for analyzing crosslinguistic differences (Levinson 2003). In addition, FoRs serve as a framework to reflect their sense of the relationship between themselves and their surrounding space (Adamou and Shen 2017;Burigo and Schultheis 2018;Levinson 2003). Moreover, children's use of FoRs in their talk also related to their perspective-taking capacity, which develops rapidly during the preschool stage, thus deserves a thorough exploration (Hughes and Donaldson 1979;Inagaki et al 2002;Newcombe and Huttenlocher 1992;Piaget 2003;Piaget and Inhelder 1956).…”

The mechanism of representational alignment in spatial dialogue

“…。 二是空间认知表征, 主要研 究对话 者在 空 间交流 时采 用 何种空 间表 征 方式 (Burigo & Schultheis, 2018;Galati & Avraamides, 2015;Galati et al, 2018;Pouliquen-Lardy et al, 2015;Scalise et al, 2018) 研究中均发现了一种所谓的表征对齐现象, 即对 话中互动双方会重复对方所使用的词汇、句法、 参照系以及视角等 (Branigan et al, 2000;Schober, 2009;Watson et al, 2009)…”