Learning about Space

Abstract

Spatial cognition is important in human learning, both in itself and as a major substrate of learning in other domains. Although some aspects of spatial cognition may be innate, it is clear that many important spatial concepts must be learned from experience. For example, Dutch and German use three spatial prepositions—op, aan, and om in Dutch—to describe containment and support relations, whereas English requires just one preposition—on—to span this range. How do children learn these different ways of partitioning the world of spatial relations? More generally, how do people come to understand powerful spatial abstractions like parallel, convergent, proportionate, and continuous?

I suggest that two powerful contributors to spatial learning are analogical mapping—structural alignment and abstraction—and language, especially relational language, which both invites and consolidates the insights that arise from analogical processes. I will present evidence that (1) analogical processes are instrumental in learning new spatial relational concepts; and, further, that (2) spatial relational language fosters analogical processing. I suggest that mutual bootstrapping between structure-mapping processes and relational language is a major contributor to spatial learning in humans.