Language in space: language and orientation skills correlate

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The authors’ review of literature in the area provides an intriguing overview of the sorts of experiments that caused the authors to test the Nicaraguan subjects’ abilities in the first place. For example, they mention that cultures that use the cardinal directions (ie, “north of here”) for spatial expressions tend to do poorly if asked to navigate through an artificial system where cardinal directions are modified, but relative directions are maintained.

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