Space in Language and Cognition: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity

Spatial orientation and direction are core areas of human and animal thinking. But, unlike animals, human populations vary considerably in their spatial thinking. Revealing that these differences correlate with language (which is probably mostly responsible for the different cognitive styles), this book includes many cross-cultural studies investigating spatial memory, reasoning, types of gesture and wayfinding abilities. It explains the relationship between language and cognition and cross-cultural differences in thinking to students of language and the cognitive sciences.