Spatial Language and Spatial Cognition

Fundamental to spatial knowledge in all species are the representations underlying object recognition, object search, and navigation through space . What sets us aside from other species is the ability to use these representations to express our spatial experience, talking about what things are, where they are, and how we might get to them. In this paper, we address two questions crucial to understanding how this is accomplished. First, how does language draw on spatial cognition so that we can manage to talk about what we perceive? Second, how does spatial language thereby provide a window on the nature of spatial cognition?