Development of Geocentric Spatial Language and Cognition: An Eco-cultural Perspective

Egocentric spatial language uses coordinates in relation to our body to talk about small-scale space ('put the knife on the right of the plate and the fork on the left'), while geocentric spatial language uses geographic coordinates ('put the knife to the east, and the fork to the west'). How do children learn to use geocentric language? And why do geocentric spatial references sound strange in English when they are standard practice in other languages? This book studies child development in Bali, India, Nepal, and Switzerland and explores how children learn to use a geocentric frame both when speaking and performing non-verbal cognitive tasks (such as remembering locations and directions). The authors examine how these skills develop with age, look at the socio-cultural contexts in which the learning takes place, and explore the ecological, cultural, social, and linguistic conditions that favor the use of a geocentric frame of reference.

About the Author

Pierre R. Dasen is Professor Emeritus of anthropology of education and cross-cultural psychology at the University of Geneva. He is the co-author (with J. Berry, Y. Poortinga and M. Segall) of two widely circulated textbooks of cross-cultural psychology. His field of expertise is cross-cultural developmental psychology, and particularly culture and cognition. He has been a research assistant to J. Piaget at the University of Geneva, where he has been teaching for twenty years; he has also been associated with the Australian National University, the Université de Montréal, the University of Nairobi, and the Universities of Nice, Fribourg, Lyon II and EHESS in Paris. He has carried out research in Australia, Canada, the Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya and Papua New Guinea, in addition to the research in Indonesia, India and Nepal reported in this volume. P. Dasen has been influential in founding the Association pour la Recherche Interculturelle (ARIC), a Francophone association for cross-cultural research. He is also an honorary member of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) and a past or current member of many other professional associations. Ramesh C. Mishra is Professor in the Department of Psychology at the Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. His principal interest is in cultural influences on human development, and he has contributed numerous articles to professional journals, both in India and abroad, in the fields of cognition, acculturation, schooling, and cross-cultural studies.