How experience shapes spatial thinking: Frames of reference across axes, ages, and cultures

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This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Drs. Steven Piantadosi and Alison Gopnik at the University of California - Berkeley, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist studying the developmental origins of spatial reasoning. Humans have extraordinary spatial abilities that allow them to manipulate the natural environment, design and build new technologies, coordinate our efforts within and across social groups, and reason about abstract ideas like time, number, and emotion. Although spatial reasoning is fundamental to human activity, it differs across groups, across contexts, and across the lifespan. By clarifying how and why spatial reasoning varies, this research will advance fundamental scientific knowledge in a broad range of social, behavioral, and economic sciences, with numerous potential applications in education and design.Although the physics of space may be universal, the way people conceptualize space varies: What one person conceptualizes as left-right another person may conceptualize as East-West or upriver-downriver. These spatial frames of reference (FoRs) are known to vary across cultures, between individuals, and over development, but the causes of this cognitive diversity remain unresolved. This research tests the proposal that FoR use varies as a function of spatial discriminability: When reasoning about spatial relations, people use the spatial continuum that is easiest to perceive or remember, whether that continuum is defined egocentrically (i.e. with respect to the body) or allocentrically (i.e. with respect to salient features of the environment). To test this proposal, a series of behavioral experiments will measure FoR use and spatial discriminability across spatial axes (i.e. left-right and front-back), age groups (i.e. children and adults), and cultures. By manipulating the left-right symmetry of participants’ visuospatial experience, these experiments will clarify the mechanisms by which such differences in spatial experience produce differences in spatial reasoning, and evaluate the downstream consequences on higher-level cognitive abilities, like those involved in reading and mathematical thinking. The results stand to refine theories of spatial cognitive development and inform behavioral interventions for enhancing spatial reasoning.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.