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Chapter 12 - Spatial Cognition

Embodied and Situated

from Part III - Empirical Developments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Barbara Tversky
Edited by
Philip Robbins  and
Murat Aydede
Philip Robbins
Affiliation:
Washington University, St Louis
Murat Aydede
Affiliation:
University of Florida
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Summary

Spatial thinking is essential for survival. Elementary to survival is knowing where to go to find food, water, and shelter and knowing how to return, as well as how to gather the food and water when they are located. Space for the mind is not like space for the physicist or surveyor, where the dimensions of space are primary and things in space are located with respect to those dimensions. The body is the first space encountered, even before birth. Experience of other spaces is channeled through the body, through perception and action. The space immediately surrounding the body is the space of actual or potential perception and action. The space we experience as we hike in the mountains or go from home to work or wander through a museum is the space of navigation. Gestures have benefits both for those making the gestures and for those watching them.
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The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition , pp. 201 - 216
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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