Abstract
Nativists have postulated fundamental geometric knowledge that predates linguistic and symbolic thought. Central to these claims is the proposal for an isolated cognitive system dedicated to processing geometric information. Testing such hypotheses presents challenges due to difficulties in eliminating the combination of geometric and non-geometric information through language. We present evidence using a modified matching interference paradigm that an incongruent shape word interferes with identifying a two-dimensional geometric shape, but an incongruent two-dimensional geometric shape does not interfere with identifying a shape word. This asymmetry in interference effects between two-dimensional geometric shapes and their corresponding shape words suggests that shape words activate spatial representations of shapes but shapes do not activate linguistic representations of shape words. These results appear consistent with hypotheses concerning a cognitive system dedicated to processing geometric information isolated from linguistic processing and provide evidence consistent with hypotheses concerning knowledge of geometric properties of space that predates linguistic and symbolic thought.
Highlights
For centuries nativists and empiricists have debated the extent to which spatial thinking is innate or learned [1]
Researchers have attempted to disrupt the encoding of spatial relations in a linguistic fashion through the implementation of distractor tasks [20,21,22], evidence for such a modular cognitive system isolated from linguistic processing remains elusive in normal functioning adults
A two-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) on RT with Target Type and Trial Type as factors revealed a main effect of Trial Type F(3, 69) = 11.47, p,.001, gp2 = 0.33, but a non-significant effect of Target Type, F(1, 23) = 0.77, p =
Summary
For centuries nativists and empiricists have debated the extent to which spatial thinking is innate or learned [1]. Experiments conducted on species from ants to adult humans have provided evidence that incidental learning of geometric properties of an environment is a fundamental and ubiquitous component of spatial cognition that occurs across phylogeny and ontogeny [9,10] Such evidence has been used in support of hypotheses for Euclidean geometry as one of many domains of core knowledge that predate linguistic and symbolic thought [11,12,13], [16,17]. To the extent that geometric processing is isolated from linguistic processing, the predictions outlined above regarding the trial type RT and accuracy effects should hold for shape targets but not word targets
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