Spatial Categories Research Articles

How is location defined? Implications for learning and transfer of location-specific control.

Much research has explored location-specific proportion compatibility (LSPC) effects (i.e., how the appearance of a stimulus in certain locations can reactively trigger different attentional control settings) to elucidate mechanisms underlying reactive control. Recently, however, failures to reproduce key evidence showing transfer of LSPC effects (originally reported in Crump & Milliken, 2009) have called into question whether control per se supports these effects. Notably, Crump and Milliken (2009), and all studies attempting to reproduce their findings, presented stimuli in two locations, one above and one below fixation. Inspired by research on differences between horizontal and vertical meridians, we examined the consequences of defining location in this way compared with alternatives. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that LSPC effects are robust when location is defined as left versus right and larger than when location is defined as upper versus lower, and additionally demonstrated LSPC effects for two locations within the same coarse spatial category (e.g., left vs. farther left). In Experiment 3, we aimed to reproduce Crump and Milliken's key findings using left and right locations for the first time. Critically, we found transfer of the LSPC effect to diagnostic items across two designs and the first evidence for a robust experiment wide LSPC effect for inducer items. Our findings support theories positing that LSPC effects reflect location-specific attentional control and more generally suggest that choosing a definition of location is not a minor methodological decision but critically impacts learning and transfer of location-specific attentional control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

DETERMINANTS AND MEASURES TO ASSESS FARMERS’ PARTICIPATION IN PARTICIPATORY IRRIGATION MANAGEMENT (PIM) AT THE TAIL-END OF IRRIGATION SCHEMES IN SRI LANKA: A REVIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

Assessing the determinants affecting farmers’ participation in Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) at the farm household level is vital in identifying the root causes of the prevailing problems at the tail-end of irrigation schemes in Sri Lanka, with a view to finding national level remedies to solve the head-tail disparities in sharing water. The main objective of this study is to propose appropriate determinants and measures to assess farming practices in PIM in Sri Lanka while reviewing the spatial and non-spatial factors that affect, whether significantly or otherwise, farmers’ participation in collective activities. A systematic literature review was conducted using PRISMA guidelines. A total of 28 full-text research articles on farmers’ participation in collective action were identified to propose determinants and measures to assess farmers’ participation in PIM. This study identified significant social, economic, managerial, institutional, locational, and physical factors based on previous studies. Addressing the knowledge gap, this study suggests 36 determinants that are helpful to assess the level of farmers’ participation in PIM in Sri Lanka. These include 10 social factors, 6 economic factors, 4 management factors, and 7 institutional factors under the nonspatial category, while 5 of the locational and 4 of the physical factors fall under the spatial category. Moreover, this study ensures consistency between the different measures applied to assess farmers’ participation and recommends the usage of distributional and proportional measures to determine farmers’ participation in PIM in Sri Lanka as well as in other countries where IMT or PIM is being implemented.

A Space for the Subject: Tracing Garden Culture in Muslim Russia

Abstract This article examines the place occupied by garden culture in the mental landscape of Russia’s Muslims from the early nineteenth century to the late Socialist era. First taken from the Qur’an as a symbol of eternal salvation, the idea that gardens might embody both aesthetic and metaphysical values was further articulated by traveling missionaries with Sufi affiliations. This idea was afterwards absorbed by the generation of students graduated from Central Asian madrasas who, in the first half of the nineteenth century, brought the fashion for having gardens back to their home villages in European Russia. Gardens built or imagined by Muslims in European Russia had a history of their own, developing from the classical vision of heavenly gardens in Qur’anic exegesis into what became a central spatial category in Sufi tradition. In post-war Soviet Russia a place of piety was rethought as dacha—the entire process reflecting the evolution of Muslim subjectivity over the last few centuries.

Water Justice across the Rural-Urban Interface: The Making of Hydrosocial Territories in New Mexico’s Rio Grande Valley

Research on rural-urban water struggles establishes the importance of symbolic spatial categories for facilitating and justifying rural-to-urban water transfers. I build on this scholarship by asking how officials construct the rural-urban interface, or patterns of interaction across spatial boundaries, during water conflicts. This study takes a historical case study approach centered on the San Juan-Chama Project (SJCP) in New Mexico (USA), a transbasin diversion authorized in 1962 to bring water from the rural San Juan River Basin into the Rio Grande Basin for urban use. Analysis of archival material, government documents, and secondary accounts show that, although the SJCP would primarily benefit urban places, proponents relied heavily on the project’s rural benefits for justification. Through this process, official actors constructed and mobilized rural-urban boundaries in ways that supported greater urban control over regional water resources. These findings have important implications for understanding the formation of rural water injustices.

On the spatial scope of warehouse activity: An exploratory study in France

This article analyses the relationship between the location of warehouses, the spatial scope of their activities and some of their operational characteristics. It uses the results of a French national survey providing detailed characteristics for 1974 warehouses of more than 5000 square metres. A typology of four spatial categories is built based on a population potential with different values of friction (ɑ). Applying logistic regression, the four categories are related to survey data describing the spatial scope of the activities of warehouses, controlling for variations in other characteristics such as seasonality and vehicle movements. The results show a significant relationship between the location of warehouses and their spatial scope. As expected, warehouses with local origins are more frequent outside the core (inner Paris) and metropolitan location categories (outer Paris and other large urban areas). The findings suggest there may be significant differences in the spatial scope of warehouse activity even within the same urban area.

The political geographies of strategic partnerships: City deals and non-deals

This article analyses the changing relations and deal making processes between the State of Finland and Finnish cities in the context of the so-called partnership approach in regional development. Within the partnership approach, the state apparatus and cities are figuratively posited as equal partners, though this equality has not been achieved in practice. The approach, promoted by consecutive Finnish governments, is analysed as an active mode of territorial politics that aims to capture or produce certain forms of urbanisation. These strategic partnerships are analysed by utilising the so-called regional cities, a group of smaller Finnish cities, as a case study. The article looks at how different participants, interviewed state officials and mayors of the regional cities, evaluate and frame the partnership approach. While the interviewees often regard the partnership approach as a functional mode of interaction and development, in practice, it creates and solidifies spatial categories and further contributes to the justification of instances of spatial selectivity. It becomes evident that deal making as a mode of regional development policy relies on hierarchisation and categorisation reflecting wider trends in state spatial transformation. The article argues that while failing to address the needs of smaller cities, the deal making process is nevertheless manifest in terms of demonstrative politics and so-called non-deals where deal making practices are constantly upheld but without clear content.

PROSTOR I VREME U DEMONOLOŠKO-MITOLOŠKIM PREDANjIMA ‒ SAVREMENA TERENSKA ISTRAŽIVANjA

The paper sheds light on the way in which the categories of time and space in demonological-mythological legends constitute a specific chronotope, reflecting the disturbing atmosphere of encounter with the paranormal. The author seeks to expose the poetics of the demonological-mythological legends, with special empha- sis on their temporal and spatial determinants. In the demonological-mythological legends space and time are deeply related. The paper considers the genre determina- tion of the chronotope in demonological-mythological legends and points out that the construction of the narrative world through temporal and spatial categories must proceed in accordance with certain genre laws, so the audience can recognize the story as demonological-mythological legend. This work is based on the folklore material which was gathered from 2018 to 2019 in the Rasina District. Interviews were conducted with two interlocutors from the village of Ribare.

Categories of Space and Time in the Christian Supertext of the Explanatory Dictionary

This article examines religious terminology (religious vocabulary recorded in explanatory dictionaries of the Russian literary language) from the standpoint of the categorial-textual approach. The methodological basis of the research proceeds from the fact that religionyms as a system-structural integrity form a special kind of supertext in the explanatory dictionary, which is organised by universal text categories based on their thematic unity. The article analyses the textual categories of space and time which structure the supertext. The study aims to identify the specificity of categories, which are peculiar to the Christian worldview and are reflected in the explanatory dictionary. The study mostly employs the categorial-textual analysis method and techniques of the component and contextual analysis methods. The most important conclusions drawn are that the spatial category of the supertext of religionyms includes objective and conceptual spaces. Objective space is based on the hierarchical dichotomy of “the earthly” and “the heavenly”. Earthly space is structured as a field where the core is the temple, the prototypical place, the nearest periphery is the place in the temple and near the temple, while the far periphery is the territory united by Christianity. Heavenly space is a linear vertical structure with the poles in the form of heaven and hell. Conceptual space can be represented as an “inverted cone” where the concrete turns into the abstract and opens into general cultural space. The Chronos of religious discourse represents the dichotomy “the temporal” vs “the eternal”. The category of temporality in the supertext of religious names is represented by objective time existing both in profane and sacred manifestations. The general conclusion is that the types of space and time in the Christian explanatory dictionary supertext do not contradict the chronotope of religious texts. The study refers to examples from the following explanatory dictionaries: The Dictionary of the Russian Language by S. I. Ozhegov (1953); The Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language by S. I. Ozhegov and N. Yu. Shvedova (1994); and The Dictionary of the Russian Language edited by A. P. Evgenyeva (1985–1988).

Топонимическая структура поморских поселений

The paper analyzes the architectural and spatial design and toponymic structure of Pomor settlements based on authors archival and field data. It also updates structure and elements of cultural landscape, identifies and describes regional features of the architectural and spatial organization of the settlement and the type of its spatial perception by local residents. The authors come to the conclusion about the dominant role of the category of space. Economic factors determine the image of space for the bearers of traditional culture. The category of space reflects the inner world of the people who experience it. Toponymic contexts analyzed from the point of view of language semantics and culture demonstrate typical morphological and morphemic models of word formation, which indicate both the universality of settlement structures, and universal toponyms with a rich internal form generating a vast interpretational field and semantic contamination of a spatial type. The toponyms, formed from anthroponyms, showing territorial belonging and marking the “space — person” relationship, are frequently found. The toponyms that appeared by transition of common names into the proper ones (reverse antonomasia) are of special interest in terms of interpretation. At the same time, reverse antonomasia did not result from the loss of the object’s main function of indicating a specific geographical object, rather, it represented itself in acquiring additional connotations (for example, Volchikha (from the word ‘wolf’), Popov Ruchei (the priest’s creek) withinthe spatial category and use in a generalized way (for example, Niz (bottom), Verkhov’ye (upper reach), Konets (end), Posad (trade quarter). The analysis of toponymic data confirms that, on the one hand, there is a rigidly defined center in the mental image of space — the habitable territory. On the other hand, the image of space for commercial fishermen was characterized by vastness, and their “striving outside” attitude did not only have a pragmatic, but also an existential character.

Frontline Drawings of Ukrainian Artists of the Second World War Period

Purpose of the article. During World War II, hundreds of Ukrainian artists were at the front. The drawings they created were a powerful source of propaganda for the Soviet regime. At the same time, in the general unity of the full-scale front-line drawing the individual features of artists of great artistic skill are clearly traced. The aim of the article is to determine the circle of leading Ukrainian artists who during the Second World War were in the troops of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army (RSCA) and worked in the field of drawing; to study the genre, artistic and stylistic structure, as well as materials and techniques of frontal drawings; identify the features of the reproduction of space-time in the front-line drawing of Ukrainian artists. Methodology. The study is based on the principle of historicism, a combination of historical and cultural, contextual methods, art history image and stylistic and system-comparative analysis. Scientific novelty. Peculiarities of human psychology of perception were clearly manifested in the drawing of frontline artists. The compression of the time field in the drawings of frontline artists is due not only to the doctrine of socialist realism, which was based on spatial three-dimensionality, but also to the peculiarities of human perception of time and space in stressful conditions. This also explains the difference of time display in the drawings created by the artists in the conditions of the front and evacuation. Artists, whose period of study coincided with the years of the avant-garde, the introduction of formal foundations of art in educational institutions, have achieved a much deeper and broader interpretation in the drawing of temporal and spatial categories. Conclusions. Frontline sketches were pictorial diaries: notes, sketches that were intended to be triggers for memories, for further writing of pictorial "memoirs" - paintings on the theme of war. This theme of Soviet propaganda will become a pass for future decades in all artistic spheres, both artistic and literary, musical, film and theater, etc., ensuring the favor of party leaders and the respect of the average Soviet man. Drawings of Serhiy Hryhoriev, Zinovy ​​Tolkachov, Vasyl Ovchynnikov, Anatol Petrytsky, Georgy Melikhov, Anton Komashko and other prominent Ukrainian artists are distinguished by the ability to give the passage of events the meaning of epic generalization, elevation above the simplified goal of capturing the moment. Keywords: drawing, Ukrainian drawing, frontline drawing, sketch, the Second World War, portrait, landscape.

The Polysemy and Hyponymy of Mandarin Spatial Prepositions and Localisers: Building Semantic Maps from the Ground up

The goal of this paper is to offer an overview of polysemy patterns in Mandarin’s chief spatial categories: prepositions (e.g.,zai) and simple and compound localisers (respectively,qianandqian-mian). The paper presents data from an elicitation study that shows how speakers can access multiple senses and hyponymy relations for the vocabulary items belonging to these categories. The paper shows that while prepositions can potentially cover different spatial relations in the opportune context (e.g.,zai“at”), localisers select increasingly specific senses (e.g.,qian“front” andqian-mian“front side”). The paper also shows how speakers can access hyponym-like sense relations emerging from these patterns (e.g.,qian-biancovering a more specific sense thanqian). Semantic dimensions such as “distance” and “location type” determine the strength of these hyponymy relations. The paper offers an account of these data based on the “semantics maps” model, which captures polysemy and hyponymy patternsviathe clusters of locations they refer to. It is shown that this novel model is consistent with previous works on the polysemy of spatial categories and sheds light on how Mandarin offers a unique organisation of this domain.

Relation of the Green Structure and the Appropriation of Public Spaces in Large-Scale Residential Areas

More than a half of residents in some capital cities of the former Socialist block live in large-scale residential areas that had been built from the 1950s to the 1980s. The public space satisfaction in the areas is low, the residents rarely appropriate the yards and streets of the housing complexes. The aim of the paper is to provide a framework for the understanding of residents’ assessment of public space and its relation to the appropriation; the framework can be used for the development of building or landscape architecture projects focused at reconstruction of the public space. Public Space Quality Model is generated in the paper. The model includes three spatial categories that are defined by metrical values, configuration components and dominant spatial elements – elements that determine size, category, and the structure of a space. Using the observation method in the residential areas of the former East Berlin, the research concludes that the model demonstrates the highest precision of predictability of the appropriation intensity of the public space when the green structure is used as the dominant spatial element. A method accompanying the model is presented in the paper that permits to use specific types of trees or shrubs in particular distancing and concrete arrangements to create spaces of high, medium, or low appropriation level in large-scale residential areas.

Comprehensive marine substrate classification applied to Canada's Pacific shelf.

Maps of bottom type are essential to the management of marine resources and biodiversity because of their foundational role in characterizing species' habitats. They are also urgently needed as countries work to define marine protected areas. Current approaches are time consuming, focus largely on grain size, and tend to overlook shallow waters. Our random forest classification of almost 200,000 observations of bottom type is a timely alternative, providing maps of coastal substrate at a combination of resolution and extents not previously achieved. We correlated the observations with depth, depth-derivatives, and estimates of energy to predict marine substrate at 100 m resolution for Canada's Pacific shelf, a study area of over 135,000 km2. We built five regional models with the same data at 20 m resolution. In addition to standard tests of model fit, we used three independent data sets to test model predictions. We also tested for regional, depth, and resolution effects. We guided our analysis by asking: 1) does weighting for prevalence improve model predictions? 2) does model resolution influence model performance? And 3) is model performance influenced by depth? All our models fit the build data well with true skill statistic (TSS) scores ranging from 0.56 to 0.64. Weighting models with class prevalence improved fit and the correspondence with known spatial features. Class-based metrics showed differences across both resolutions and spatial regions, indicating non-stationarity across these spatial categories. Predictive power was lower (TSS from 0.10 to 0.36) based on independent data evaluation. Model performance was also a function of depth and resolution, illustrating the challenge of accurately representing heterogeneity. Our work shows the value of regional analyses to assessing model stationarity and how independent data evaluation and the use of error metrics can improve understanding of model performance and sampling bias.

Hic et ibi.

Even though spacious conditions are integral parts of the vast majority of studies in the fields of sociolinguistics and variationist linguistics, they are not always discussed as subject matters per se. The special issue In Stadt und Land – Perspektiven variations- und soziolinguistischer Forschung aims at uniting different approaches that construe spatial categories not as sheer preconditions for the assignment of linguistic features or for the drawing up of maps but as central parameters in the analyses. The contributions thus illustrate one of the current trends in sociolinguistic and variationist linguistic research to explicitly discuss, conceptualize and systematize spatial categories.

PECULIARITY OF STRUCTURALLY SIGNIFICANT ELEMENTS ON THE LEVEL OF PLOT AND COMPOSITION IN V. PIDMOHYLNYI'S NOVEL «A LITTLE TOUCH OF DRAMA»

Background. The modernist-temporal semantics of the cultural epoch of the first third of the XX century was reflected in many ways in the works of Valerian Pidmohylnyi, whose works the researchers rightfully considered one of the biggest achievements of Ukrainian literature of this period. The novel «A Little Touch of Drama» poses many questions that require thoughtful scientific consideration of literary critics. Among them, there is a question of defining the spatial categories of topos, loci, chronotope of the city, the realities of the day, the details of the real world, which outline the characters.
 The purpose of the article to investigate the peculiarities of such structurally significant elements of the plot-compositional level of V. Pidmohylnyi's novel «A Little Touch of Drama» as spatial categories of topos, loci, chronotope of the city, realities of the day, detailing of the real world, including household details, interior semantics, clothes, decorations, food, time and sound markers, etc.
 Methods: holistic-systemic, analytical reading of an artistic text.
 Results. The article focuses on the image of Kyiv, the city where the characters live – the main topos of the novel, which includes various social loci, the everyday items. Private locations (closed space of the house, the room) form the external and communicative space of the characters – Marta Vysotska, Yurii Slavenko, Iren Markevych, etc., who are inscribed in the specific interiors of rooms where cyclic time prevails. The question of the semantics of the interior is raised (the basic interior of Marta's room is shown briefly while the high semiotic status of the Markevychs' apartment is depicted in much richer details). The motif of marking Irene with things in her room is repeated in different plot situations. Household details, in particular household items of the Markevychi’s, are an essential part of their measured arranged existence.
 Household items add to the psychological features of the characters, as evidenced in particular by the author's attitude to detailing the clothes of the characters and – much less – their food. In the text of the novel, only a few features mark the clothes of the characters, but they are enough to reveal the characters. Detailing of women's jewelry and perfumes by Marta Vysotska and Iren Markevych is also embodied, which determines the social, age, material, psychological features of their characters. The question of the food code in «A Little Touch of Drama» is raised, however in comparison with the conceptual field of household items, outfits of the characters, it is rather limited; it would seem that the informative attention is focused on intellectual, philosophical, psychological, love collisions; and yet the motive of food shows the author's attitude to the characters, their inner state, mental disorders and is often switched to the subtext.
 The temporal parameters of the text of «A Little Touch of Drama» are definite: the events take place within two and a half months, which is psychologically motivated. Both the beginning and the end of the plot action are clearly defined; not only the days of the months, the time of day but also the specific years are mentioned in the text, which brings together the plot lines, defines the time-space, which make a visible and causal link between the stories of the characters. Sound markers (knock on the door, the auditory sensation of footsteps perform specific emotional, expressive, and semantic functions.
 Discussion. Analysis of such significant elements on the level of plot and composition of V. Pidmohylnyi's novel «A Little Touch of Drama» as the chronotope of the city, the chronotope of the room, familiar and alien space, topos and loci, realities of the day, detailing and psychological peculiarities of the interior, character's clothes, food, time, sound markers, etc., express the ideological and aesthetic dimension and the author's position in the text. The research makes it possible to clarify the socio-cultural meaning of the work, the life strategy of the characters, the peculiarities of the author's understanding of the essence of the world through the material code.

Esperienza e percezione dello spazio reale e virtuale durante l’emergenza Covid-19 in Italia

Attendance, use and perception of real and virtual spaces have been conditioned by the constraints imposed by the management of the Covid-19 emergency. These restrictions have made clear the importance of spatial categories in the definition and articulation of existences and experiences. This paper reflects on how the ways of experiencing and perceiving real and virtual spaces have changed during the lockdown. The paper presented the analysis of the data collected through an online questionnaire spread on the national territory from 22 April to 3 May 2020. The aim is to assess whether and how the perception and experience of real spaces (domestic and public), virtual space and time differ on the basis of variables and conditions linked to the socio-demographic and professional status of the respondents, the housing conditions and their geographical origin.

Spaces of occupation: Colonial enclosure and confinement in British Malaya

This article examines how the geography of foreign occupation changed in British Malaya between 1895 and 1960. In particular, the article reveals how notions related to enclosure and confinement influenced the introduction of new territorial and spatial categories in British Malaya that enclosed the region's landscape and natural environment while simultaneously concentrating the region's diverse population into racially and economically segregated communities in the Malay interior. This geography, crafted during the early colonial period, came to have particular significance in the period following World War Two. At that time, during the so-called Malayan Emergency, the British administration forcibly resettled hundreds of thousands of Malaya's rural inhabitants into highly regulated and repressive state spaces, known as New Villages, White and Black Areas, and Regrouping Areas. Utilizing a mixture of secondary sources, archival materials, and digital mapping technologies, this article shows how the creation of these new Emergency spaces were not novel but were a continuation of longstanding patterns of land control in the colony that remade Malaya's natural environment on a vast scale.

Worldview in Gothic Story by E. F. Benson “Gavon’s Eve”

The issues of creating a picture of the world in the story of the English writer E. F. Benson’s “Gavon’s Eve”. It is concluded that the picture of the world is organized by two external chronotopes: the chronotope of the Scottish village of Gavon, the chronotope of the Pictish fortress and the internal chronotope, concentrated around the consciousness of the narrator. Attention is paid to the functioning of forms of artistic space and time, built on the principle of binary oppositions. It is shown that spatial correlations between external and internal, far and near, western and eastern have an increased semantic significance in the narrative. Particular attention is paid to the role of the spatial categories of up and down, revealing the author’s concept of the eternity of infernal evil. It has been proven that the key forms of artistic time are day and night, light and dark, past and present, which are traditional for Gothic subjects. The relevance of the study is due to the growing interest in the genre of gothic prose, which today is associated, in particular, with attempts to resist anti-humanistic, destructive trends in the life of modern society. The novelty of the research is seen in the fact that the issues of artistry of Gothic stories by E. F. Benson is still underresearched.

Rooms without walls: Young children draw objects but not layouts.

Drawing is the epitome of uniquely human expression, with few known limits beyond those of our perceptual and motor systems and the cultures in and for which we draw. The present study evaluates whether the drawings of young children nevertheless reveal an early emerging bias in the depiction of 2 different foundational spatial categories: layouts and objects. Across 2 experiments following preregistered designs and analysis plans, 4-year-old children either sat in a colorful "fort" or looked at a small "toy" version of the fort and were asked to draw exactly what they saw. Children's drawings often omitted the walls composing the fort's layout but included the corresponding object parts for the toy. Symbolic representations of space in young children's drawings thus privilege small-scale objects over large and fixed layout geometry. A distinction between the intuitive geometries of layouts and objects leads to their differential treatment in both humans and other animals during everyday navigation. This distinction may also underlie the differential treatment of layouts and objects in children's drawings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Are current road investments exacerbating spatial inequalities inside European peripheral regions?

ABSTRACT The European Union has made considerable investments in transport infrastructures to reduce development gaps within and across territories and achieve a stronger regional cohesion. However, these economic efforts have not shown the expected effects, especially in peripheral regions, mainly due to the varied nature of their inner areas. This study aims to shed light on the existence of different types of areas inside peripheral regions that respond differently to the construction of new high-capacity roads, conditioning the achievement of cohesion goals. These disparities were explored through a detailed intraregional analysis of the peripheral Spanish Northwest Area over a 25-year period, through the identification of spatial categories that group homogenous areas in attention to three criteria: socio-economic development, spatial dynamics of urbanization and accessibility improvements. The application of a hierarchical clustering technique to different time scenarios and their comparison showed the existence of dynamic, stable and regressive areas, in terms of performance. Our findings reveal that with accessibility improvements regressive areas decreased and dynamic ones increased over time, but this transformation did not translate into an improvement in socio-economic intraregional cohesion. These results highlight the importance of considering intraregional diversity when formulating and implementing policies aimed at strengthening territorial cohesion.