Plasticity of human spatial cognition: Spatial language and cognition covary 
across cultures

Haun, Daniel B. M.; Rapold, Christian J.; Janzen, Gabriele; Levinson, Stephen C.

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.12.009

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Plasticity of human spatial cognition: Spatial language and cognition covary across cultures

MPS-Authors

/persons/resource/persons73

Haun, Daniel B. M.
Max Planck Research Group for Comparative Cognitive Anthropology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society;
Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society;

External Resource

No external resources are shared

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Haun, D. B. M., Rapold, C. J., Janzen, G., & Levinson, S. C. (2011). Plasticity of human spatial cognition: Spatial language and cognition covary across cultures. Cognition, 119(1), 70-80. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.12.009.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-000F-F22D-C

Abstract

The present paper explores cross-cultural variation in spatial cognition by comparing spa-tial reconstruction tasks by Dutch and Namibian elementary school children. These twocommunities differ in the way they predominantly express spatial relations in language.Four experiments investigate cognitive strategy preferences across different levels oftask-complexity and instruction. Data show a correlation between dominant linguistic spa-tial frames of reference and performance patterns in non-linguistic spatial memory tasks.This correlation is shown to be stable across an increase of complexity in the spatial array.When instructed to use their respective non-habitual cognitive strategy, participants werenot easily able to switch between strategies and their attempts to do so impaired their per-formance. These results indicate a difference not only in preference but also in competenceand suggest that spatial language and non-linguistic preferences and competences in spa-tial cognition are systematically aligned across human populations.