The Adaptation of Spatial Concepts

Recent Research on the Science of the Spatial Mind

Recent research on the science of the spatial mind has shown that young children are perceptive to the variations between relations and spatial conceptions. The children’s spatial perceptions depend on their ages; for example, between the ages of 5 and 8 months, newborns are able to distinguish clearly between a container and a cylindrical object that serves as a container but doesn’t have a bottom for containment. There are various viewpoints that explain how newborns learn to perform tasks and establish spatial concepts. A link between early cognitive development and language learning is provided by the spatial idea (Choi & Casasola, 2005). The essay aims at examining the ability to adapt spatial concepts from preverbal event schemas to semantic categories for a number of languages.

Analysis of the Spatial Adaptation

Analysis of the Spatial Adaptation

The Ability for Infants to Understand Early Spatial Concepts

The ability for infants to understand early spatial concepts is determined by the early cognitive potentialities and guidance of language acquisition. Also, before infants learn sematic categories they needed to understand linguistic inputs and preverbal concepts. This is shown through a number of ways in which languages can differ in domain of spatial relations. To begin with, cross linguistic differences in spatial semantic categories is the reason why languages differ. In this regard, the languages differ in the method they partition and group several types of support relations and containment. For instance, in English, considering notions of contact, support, and containment, that is, (a) a cup on a table and (b) an apple in bowel, are mostly termed as on which used for support. This is different from containment relations, in. For Dutch, op is used for (a) and in for (b) (Lai & Narasimhan, 2015).

Peculiar Sematic Categories in English and Korean

However, there are peculiar sematic categories in English and Korean. For Korean, the classification of containment and support is through the spatial term, kkita2 which cuts across categories such as put in and put on. These events in English are always expressed by given verbs in Korean (Plumbert, Jodie, & Spencers, 2009). Kkita concentrates on the fits between complimentary shapes, in which the fits are got by covering, insertion, encirclement, and insertion. On the other side, English uses put in especially when it ends up in the interior space (Choi & Casasola, 2005).

Language Development and Children’s Sematic Organization

The language development and children sematic organization are defined by language sematic systems which the preposition in and on in English fit well in kkita in Korean. Studies show that 2 years-old children learning English and Korean use peculiar terms in language-specific method and 18-23 months use sematic principles (Obler & Higby, 2014). For proverbial infants, the categories of loose and tight containment relations are distinguished used Korean language while English does not. However, infants in English environment could differentiate between tight-IN and loose-ON events when given tests and kkita showed a tight-fit relation in Korean (Choi & Casasola, 2005). In addition to that, a decrease in sensitivity in the English infants and maintenance in the Korean ones indicated that the behavior on nonlinguistic tasks was influenced by language-specific spatial semantics.

Children’s Socialization and Language Acquisition

Children are socialized into their own culture when they start forming image schemas. This indicates that language acquisition is intentional and a product of socialization. In this view, language influences nonverbal categorization of spatial relations in 11-14 months in Korean infants and 24-29 months in English infants. Furthermore, the preverbal infants can relate the events and schemas of spatial relations to language development (Dörnyei, 2014).

References

Choi, S. & Casasola, M. (2005). Preverbal categorization of support relations. Presented at the Society for Research in Child Development, April 7-10, Atlanta, Georgia.

Dörnyei, Z. (2014). The psychology of the language learner: Individual differences in second language acquisition. Routledge.

Lai, V. T., & Narasimhan, B. (2015). Verb representation and thinking-for-speaking effects in Spanish–English bilinguals. In Cognitive Science Perspectives on Verb Representation and Processing (pp. 235-256). Springer International Publishing.

Obler, L., & Higby, E. (2014). The adaptation of native language construal patterns in second language acquisition.

Plumbert, Jodie M, & Spencers, J. (2009). The Emerging Special Mind (pp. 142-167). Soonja Choi, San Diego State University