Interactions between language and thought during the development of spatial cognition

This thesis explores two hypotheses proposing a role for language in the development of spatial cognition.; Papers 1 and 2 investigated the hypothesis that language plays a role in children's ability to use landmarks to remember the location of a hidden object after being disoriented. In the first set of studies (Paper 1), we gave 4-year-old children verbal cues that varied in their linguistic and informational structure, as the child watched the object be hidden in a rectangular room with one landmark (a red wall). Children's search accuracy was significantly improved with two cues that highlighted the relevance of the landmark for the search task, but not with a cue that highlighted the salience of the landmark. These results suggest that language can help children to construe an object like a red wall as a relevant guide to another location.; The studies in Paper 2 explored how language affected the nature of children's spatial representation, by testing children in a round room with a single landmark with and without a verbal cue. Consistent with the results of Paper 1, the verbal cue helped children use the landmark as a guide to the sticker's location. However, this benefit was limited to locations near the landmark, indicating understanding the relevance of the landmark is only part of the conceptual problem for children.; Paper 3 investigated the origins of children's frame-of-reference concepts. In three studies, 4-year-old children learned terms for geocentric concepts (north and south) much more quickly and robustly than terms for egocentric concepts (left and right). Children rapidly generalized the meanings of novel geocentric terms beyond the training context and acquired the terms in an environment with no distinctive perceptual information. These findings suggest that children map words like "north" to pre-existing spatial concepts, arguing against the position that the acquisition of such concepts is language-dependent.; In short, these studies reveal mutual influences of language and thought in spatial cognitive development. The findings demonstrate that language can dramatically alter children's on-line spatial representation and navigation behavior, and that rich conceptual structure constrains and supports language acquisition.