How far is near? Inferring distance from spatial descriptions

Abstract

A word may mean different things in different contexts. The current study explored the changing denotations of spatial terms, focusing on how the distance inferred from a spatial description varied as a function of the size of the objects being spatially related. We examined both terms that explicitly convey distance (i.e., topological terms such as near), and terms not traditionally associated with distance (i.e., projective terms such as left).The critical finding was that estimates of distance associated with both classes of terms were systematically influenced by the size of the objects, generalising an effect observed by Morrow and Clark (1988) with approach. The effect was replicated using an indirect scaling method, and centre-to-centre and edge-to-edge estimates. The results support the idea that dimensions relevant to the processing of spatial terms are not limited to information explicitly conveyed by the spatial terms.

We thank Shannon van Deman for her many contributions to this project.

Notes

¹The setting sentences were not designed to contain this manipulation. Three independent raters judged the implied spatial extent of the environment portrayed by the setting sentences, with the constraint that half of the items be considered small scale and half be considered large scale. There was uniform agreement on 26 of the 48 items; for the remainder, the item was given the code provided by 2 of the 3 raters. The following 24 items (listed and numbered in the appendix) were small-settings (1, 2, 5, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 24, 28, 29, 32, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 47, 48); the remainder were large-scale settings. We thank Larry Barsalou for suggesting that we look at setting size.