The Cultural Transmission of Spatial Cognition: Evidence from a Large-scale Study

The Cultural Transmission of Spatial Cognition: Evidence from a Large-scale Study Jurgen Bohnemeyer 1 (jb77@buffalo.edu), Katharine T. Donelson 1 , Randi E. Tucker 1 , Elena Benedicto 2 , Alejandra Capistran Garza 3 , Alyson Eggleston 4 , Nestor Hernandez Green 5 , Maria de Jesus Selene Hernandez Gomez 6 , Samuel Herrera Castro 8 , Carolyn K. O’Meara 7 , Enrique Palancar 9 , Gabriela Perez Baez 10 , Gilles Polian 11 , Rodrigo Romero Mendez 7 Department of Linguistics, University at Buffalo Department of Linguistics, Purdue University Departamento de Filosofia de la Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana- Iztapalapa Department of English, East Carolina University Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologia Social – Distrito Federal Instituto de Investigaciones Antropologicas, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico Centro de Estudios Linguisticos y Literarios. Facultad de Lenguas y Letras, Universidad Autonoma de Queretaro Instituto de Investigaciones Filologicas, Seminario de Lenguas Indigenas, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico Abstract School of English and Languages, University of Surrey Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologia Social – Sureste Wassmann & Dasen, 1998; Mishra, Dasen & Niraula, 2003; Haun et al., 2011; inter alia) has given rise to two competing interpretations. The use of particular frame types may be acquired, and speech, along with other forms of observable behavior, may play a role in its cultural transmission (Levinson, 2003; Majid et al., 2004; Le Guen, 2011). Alternatively, the use of all major frame types may be innately available population-independently and usage preferences in both discourse and nonlinguistic cognition reflect shallow, readily mutable ontogenetic adaptations to factors of topography, population geography, literacy, and education (Li & Gleitman, 2002; Li et al., 2011). To test these competing hypotheses, we studied the use of reference frames in discourse and recall memory in members of 11 populations: speakers of six Mesoamerican languages, two non-Mesoamerican indigenous languages, and three varieties of Spanish, the dominant contact language spoken in the same geographic region. These studies apply designs to the largest number of populations targeted in a single study of this nature to date that are similar in kind to what has become standard in this line of inquiry. A more important innovation, however, is the use of mixed-models linear regression analysis to discern which factors predict an individual participant’s behavior. We present the results of two studies of the use of spatial reference frames in speakers of 11 linguistic varieties. A series of mixed-models linear regression analyses of the responses to a referential communication task shows the significant factors in predicting frame use to be the participants’ first and second-language, their literacy, the local topography and population density. This suggests that language can play an irreducible role in the transmission of practices of spatial reference and that such practices may be diffused through language contact. However, in a recall memory experiment, only speakers of varieties with an egocentric linguistic bias preferred egocentric responses. Both speakers of languages with a geocentric bias and speakers of varieties without a clear bias preferred geocentric responses. This unexpected finding is in line with a hypothetical mild innate pan-simian bias for geocentric cognition, which can be superseded by a learned egocentric bias. Keywords: Linguistic relativity; spatial cognition; field studies; statistics. Introduction We present a large-scale investigation of the use of spatial reference frames in language and nonlinguistic cognition in speakers of 11 linguistic varieties of Mexico, Nicaragua, and Spain. Spatial reference frames are coordinate systems used to identify regions and directions in space. The axes of the coordinate system may be modeled after those of the body of an observer (egocentric frames), a reference entity (allocentric intrinsic frames), or some environmental entity or feature (allocentric extrinsic = geocentric frames). The demonstration of a robust alignment between population-specific preferences in the use of spatial reference frames for small-scale space in discourse and recall memory (Levinson, 1996, 2003; Pederson et al., 1998; Frame use in discourse: Ball & Chair We conducted a referential communication task (Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1990) to assess the use of reference frames in discourse by members of the 11 populations. Materials and method The Ball and Chair (B&C) task is a photo-matching game consisting of four sets of 12 photos depicting a ball and