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

Abstract

abstractSpatial 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.