Journal article
The Content and Organization of Communication about Object Locations
Journal of memory and language, Vol.34(4), pp.477-498
08/1995
DOI: 10.1006/jmla.1995.1022
Abstract
Four experiments investigated how the communication task and the structure of the environment influence the content and organization of messages about object locations. Subjects placed objects in a multi-level space and later wrote down messages about the object locations. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects treated the tasks of giving directions about how to find the objects and describing where the objects were differently. Hierarchically organized directions usually started with the most general spatial unit, but descriptions usually started with the most specific spatial unit. Experiments 3 and 4 examined how the spatial relation between the object and the small and large landmarks influenced the order in which landmarks were mentioned. Subjects almost always mentioned large landmarks before small landmarks when the object was on the large landmark and next to the small landmark. In contrast, subjects mentioned large landmarks before small landmarks only about half of the time when the object was on the large landmark and in, on, or underneath the small landmark. Together, the communication task and the organization of landmarks determined the extent to which spatial messages were hierarchically organized. Findings are discussed in terms of what they tell us about the pragmatics of spatial communication and conceptual biases in coding object locations.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- The Content and Organization of Communication about Object Locations
- Creators
- J.M PlumertC CarswellK DevetD Ihrig
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of memory and language, Vol.34(4), pp.477-498
- DOI
- 10.1006/jmla.1995.1022
- ISSN
- 0749-596X
- eISSN
- 1096-0821
- Publisher
- Elsevier Inc
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 08/1995
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences; Injury Prevention Research Center
- Record Identifier
- 9983993300102771
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