This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Spatial Cognition, Spatial Cognition 2008, held in Freiburg, Germany, in September 2008. The 27 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited lectures were carefully reviewed and selected from 54 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on spatial orientation, spatial navigation, spatial learning, maps and modalities, spatial communication, spatial language, similarity and abstraction, concepts and reference frames, as well as spatial modeling and spatial reasoning.

Languages differ in how they describe space, and such differences between languages can be used to explore the relation between language and thought. This 2003 book shows that even in a core cognitive domain like spatial thinking, language influences how people think, memorize and reason about spatial relations and directions. After outlining a typology of spatial coordinate systems in language and cognition, it is shown that not all languages use all types, and that non-linguistic cognition mirrors the systems available in the local language. The book reports on collaborative, interdisciplinary research, involving anthropologists, linguists and psychologists, conducted in many languages and cultures around the world, which establishes this robust correlation. The overall results suggest that thinking in the cognitive sciences underestimates the transformative power of language on thinking. The book will be of interest to linguists, psychologists, anthropologists and philosophers, and especially to students of spatial cognition.

and processes which are exclusive to humans in their encoding, storing, decoding and retrieving spatial knowledge for various tasks. The authors present and discuss connectionist models of cognitive maps which are based on local representation, versus models which are based on distributed representation, as well as connectionist models concerning language and spatial relations. As is well known, Gibson's (1979) ecological approach suggests a view on cognition which is diametrically different from the classical main stream view: perception (and thus cognition) is direct, immediate and needs no internal information processing, and is thus essentially an external process of interaction between an organism and its external environment. The chapter by Harry Heft introduces J. J. Gibson's ecological approach and its implication to the construction of cognitive maps in general and to the issue of wayfinding in particular. According to Heft, main stream cognitive sciences are essentially Cartesian in nature and have not as yet internalized the implications of Darwin's theory of evolution. Gibson, in his ecological approach, has tried to do exactly this. The author introduces the basic terminology of the ecological approach and relates its various notions, in particular optic flow, nested hierarchy and affordances, to navigation and the way routes and places in the environment are learned.

With the aim of automatically reasoning with spatial aspects in a cognitive way, several qualitative models have been developed recently in the Qualitative Spatial Reasoning field. However, there is no model to reason with several spatial aspects in a uniform way. Moreover, most of these models simplify spatial objects to points. In this book we present a novel approach for integrating the qualitative concepts of orientation, distance, and cardinal directions, using points as well as extended objects as primitive of reasoning, based on Constraint Logic Programming. The resulting model has been applied to build a qualitative Navigation Simulator on the structured environment of the city of Castellon.

The 15 essays in this volume bring together research and theoretical viewpoints in the areas of psychology, linguistics, anthropology, and neuroscience, presenting a synthesis across these diverse domains. Throughout, authors address and debate each others arguments and theories.

This work investigates how different fifth-grade students solve spatial-verbal tasks and the role of language in this process. Based on a synthesis of theoretical foundations and methodological issues for supporting the relationship between spatial ability and language, this present study examines and classifies strategies used by students as well as the obstacles they encounter when solving spatial tasks in the reconstruction method.

How do people know where in the world they are? How do they find their way about? These are the sort of questions about spatial orientation with which this book is concerned. Staying spatially oriented is a pervasive aspect of all be havior. Animals must find their way through their environ ment searching efficiently for food and returning to their home areas and many species have developed very sophisticated sensing apparatus for helping them do this. Even little children know their way around quite complex environments. They remember where they put things and are able to retrieve them with little trouble. Adults in societies across the world have developed complex navigational systems for help ing them find their way over long distances with few dis tinctive landmarks. People across the world use their langu ages to communicate about spatial orientation in problems of simple direction giving and spatial descriptions as well as problems of long range navigation.

4.3.3.3 awotao: rib -- 4.3.3.4 awopo: 'crossways' -- 4.3.3.5 ahmotao: 'clear space' -- 4.3.4 'In middle of' lamnao -- 4.3.5 'In alignment with' pole -- 4.3.6 Contact locative: -pëk(ë) -- 4.3.7 Superior and inferior locatives and directionals -- 4.3.7.1 epoi: superior, no contact -- 4.3.7.2 uhpo: superior, contact -- 4.3.7.3 ahpo: 'on the back of' -- 4.3.7.4 opinë: inferior -- 4.3.7.5 opikai: inferior -- 4.3.8 Anterior and posterior locatives and directionals -- 4.3.8.1 em(ïn)patao: 'facing' -- 4.3.8.2 waliktao: 'behind' -- 4.3.9 Environmental locatives and directionals -- 4.3.9.1 aktuhpoi: 'upstream' -- 4.3.9.2 ametai: 'downstream' -- 4.3.9.3 etatopo: riverbank -- 4.3.9.4 talïhnao: 'outside' -- 4.3.10 At the base of: mitao -- 4.3.11 Around: wala -- 4.3.12 Perlatives -- 4.3.13 Source: -inë -- 4.3.14 Expressions of time -- 4.4 Third person pronouns and demonstratives -- 4.5 Locative adverbs -- 4.5.1 Motion adverbs -- 4.6 Final remarks -- 5 The Perception of Space and Landscape by the Wayana -- 5.1 Introduction -- 5.2 Frames of Reference -- 5.3 Finding one's way -- 5.4 Categorization -- 5.4.1 Postpositions and Spatiality -- 5.5 Landscape -- 5.6 Wayana in national space -- 5.7 Concluding remarks -- 6 Concluding Remarks -- Appendices -- References -- Photo-object matching task