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Linguistic and Cultural Universality of the Concept of Sense-of-Direction

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Book cover Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 6899))

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Abstract

We analyze self-reported sense-of-direction in samples of people from Santa Barbara, Freiburg, Saarbrücken, Tokyo, and Beijing. The Santa Barbara Sense-of-Direction Scale (SBSOD) by Hegarty and colleagues primarily assesses survey spatial abilities in directly-experienced environments. It was translated into German, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. Results suggest sense-of-direction is a unitary and meaningful concept across the five samples and four languages. In four of the samples, males report significantly better sense-of-direction than do females. Some variations are found across the five samples in overall level of sense-of-direction and in response patterns across the 15 items. Because it is strongly related to the survey spatial thinking that primarily underlies sense-of-direction, and because it can be counted in a relatively straightforward manner, we specifically examine thinking in terms of cardinal directions as a component of sense-of-direction, including conducting a count of cardinal-direction words from Internet corpora in the four languages. We find support for sense-of-direction as a coherent concept across the four languages and as a useful tool to measure individual differences in sense-of-direction. We also consider linguistic/cultural variations in sense-of-direction, especially with respect to variations in physical environments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, 93106, USA

    Daniel R. Montello & Danqing Xiao

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  1. Daniel R. Montello
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  2. Danqing Xiao
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  1. University of Maine, 04469, Orono, ME, USA

    Max Egenhofer , Nicholas Giudice , Reinhard Moratz  & Michael Worboys , ,  & 

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Montello, D.R., Xiao, D. (2011). Linguistic and Cultural Universality of the Concept of Sense-of-Direction. In: Egenhofer, M., Giudice, N., Moratz, R., Worboys, M. (eds) Spatial Information Theory. COSIT 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6899. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23196-4_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23196-4_15

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-23195-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-23196-4

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