Language, Cognition and Space - The State of the Art and New Directions - Vyvyan Evans
2 Language and space: momentary interactions
Language, Cognition and Space - The State of the Art and New Directions - Vyvyan Evans
Barbara Landau
Johns Hopkins University
Banchiamlack Dessalegn
Johns Hopkins University
Ariel Micah Goldberg
Johns Hopkins University
Description
The main purpose of this chapter is to lay out evidence suggesting a new solution to this impasse. In particular, it is suggested here that a straightforward ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the question of whether language changes spatial thought is too simplistic. Rather, the authors will present a different twist to the issue, suggested by some newer developments in thinking about the interaction between language and spatial cognition. Specifically, the authors review evidence that language – once acquired – can strongly modulate our non-linguistic spatial representations, but that much of this is done in the moment of carrying out a specific task, and does not result in permanent organizational change to spatial representation.