Chapter Three - The Cognition of Spatial Cognition: Domain-General within Domain-specific

Abstract

Abstract Few would argue against the position that spatial cognition involves cognition. Much of spatial cognition research has focused on illuminating the domain-general processes (e.g. attention, memory, or representation) active in this domain-specific field. In this chapter, we suggest that researchers view this domain-general to domain-specific relationship in the opposite direction. In other words, we review spatial cognition research within the context of its utility for understanding domain-general processes. For a cognitive process to be domain-general, it should be evident across a wide variety of domain-specific tasks, including verbal and spatial ones. Yet, the majority of data supporting domain-general models comes from verbal tasks, such as list learning. Thus, we suggest that considering spatial cognition tasks and findings along with those from other domains would enhance our understanding of truly domain-general processing.