Abstract
Although considerations of discourse coherence and cognitive processing suggest that communicators should adopt consistent perspectives when describing spatial scenes, in many cases they switch perspectives. Ongoing research examining cognitive costs indicates that these are small and exacted in establishing a mental model of a scene but not in retrieving information from a well-known scene. A perspective entails a point of view, a referent object, and terms of reference. These may change within a perspective, exacting cognitive costs, so that the costs of switching perspective may not be greater than the costs of maintaining the same perspective. Another project investigating perspective choice for self and other demonstrates effects of salience of referent object and ease of terms of reference. Perspective is mixed not just in verbal communications but also in pictorial ones, suggesting that at times, switching perspective is more effective than maintaining a consistent one.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bierwisch, M. (1967). Some Semantic Universals of German Adjectivals, Foundations of Language 3: 1–36.
Bridgeman, B. (1999). Motor Response to Cognitively Mislocalized Targets. Manuscript submitted for publications.
Black, J.B., Turner, T.J. and Bower, G.H. (1979). Point of View in Narrative Comprehension, Memory and Production, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 18: 187–198.
Bryant, D.J. and Tversky, B. (1992). Assessing Spatial Frameworks with Object and Direction Probes, Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 30: 29–32.
Bryant, D.J. and Tversky, B. (1999). Mental Representations of Spatial Relations from Diagrams and Models, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 25: 137–156.
Bryant, D.J., Tversky, B. and Franklin, N. (1992). Internal and External Spatial Frameworks for Representing Described Scenes, Journal of Memory and Language 31: 74–98.
Bryant, D.J., Lanca, M. and Tversky, B. (1995). Spatial Concepts and Perception of Physical and Diagrammed Scenes, Perceptual and Motor Skills 81: 531–546.
Carlson, L. (1999). Selecting a Reference Frame, Spatial Cognition and Computation 1(4): 365–379.
Carlson-Radvansky, L. and Irwin, D.E. (1993). Frames of Reference in Vision and Language: Where is Above? Cognition 46: 223–244.
Clark, H.H. (1973). Space, Time, Semantics, and the Child. In T.E. Moores (ed.), Cognitive Development and the Acquisition of Language. Academic Press, New York, pp. 27–63.
Couclelis, H., Golledge, R.G., Gale, N. and Tobler, W. (1987). Exploring the Anchor-point Hypothesis of Spatial Cognition, Journal of Environmental Psychology 7: 99–122.
Farrell, W.S. (1979). Coding Left and Right, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 5: 42–51.
Franklin, N. and Tversky, B. (1990). Searching Imagined Environments, Journal of Experi-mental Psychology: General 119: 63–76.
Franklin, N., Tversky, B. and Coon, V. (1992). Switching Points of View in Spatial Mental Models Acquired from Text, Memory and Cognition 20: 507–518.
Graziano, M.S.A. and Gross, C.G. (1994). Mapping Space with Neurons, Current Directions in Psychological Science 3: 164–167.
Ehrich, V. and Koster, C. (1983). Discourse Organization and Sentence Form: The Structure of Room Descriptions in Dutch, Discourse Processes 6: 169–195.
Isaacs, E.A. and Clark, H.H. (1987). References in Conversation between Experts and Novices, Journal of General Psychology 116: 26–37.
Lee, P.U. and Tversky, B. (In preparation). Switching Perspectives Has a Cognitive Cost.
Levelt, W.J.M. (1984). Some Perceptual Limitations on Talking about Space. In A.J. van Doorn, W.A. van der Grind and J.J. Koenderink (eds.), Limits on Perception. VNU Science Press, Utrecht, The Netherlands, pp. 323–358.
Levinson, S. (1996). Frames of Reference and Molyneux's Question: Cross-linguistic Evidence. In P. Bloom, M.A. Peterson, L. Nadel and M.F. Garrett (eds.), Space and Language. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 109–169.
Mainwaring, S.D., Tversky, B., Ohgishi, M. and Schiano, D.J. (2000). Descriptions of Simple Spatial Scenes in English and Japanese. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Maki, R.H. and Braine, L.G. (1985). The Role of Verbal Labels in the Judgment of Orientation and Location, Perception 14: 67–80.
Maki, R.H., Grandy, C.A. and Hauge, G. (1979). Why is Telling Right from Left more Difficult than Telling above from below? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 5: 52–67.
Morrow, D.G. and Clark, H.H. (1988). Interpreting Words in Spatial Descriptions, Language and Cognitive Processes 3: 275–291.
Perrig, W. and Kintsch, W. (1985). Propositional and Situational Representations of Text, Journal of Memory and Language 24: 503–518.
Robertson, L.C. and Rafal, R. (in press). Disorders of Visual Attention. In M. Gazzaniga (ed.), The Cognitive Neurosciences, second edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Schober, M.F. (1993). Spatial Perspective-Taking in Conversation, Cognition 47: 1–24.
Shanon, B. (1983). Answers to Where-Questions, Discourse Processes 6: 319–352.
Shanon, B. (1984). Room Descriptions, Discourse Processes 7: 225–255.
Sholl, M.J. (1999). Egocentric Frames of Reference Used for the Retrieval of Survey Knowledge Learned by Map and Navigation, Spatial Cognition and Computation 1(4): 475–494.
Sholl, M.J. and Egeth, H.E. (1981). Right-Left Confusion in the Adult: A Verbal Labeling Effect, Memory and Cognition 9: 339–350.
Taylor, H.A. and Tversky, B. (1992a). Descriptions and Depictions of Environments, Memory and Cognition 20: 483–496.
Taylor, H.A. and Tversky, B. (1992b). Spatial Mental Models Derived from Survey and Route Descriptions, Journal of Memory and Language 31: 261–292.
Taylor, H.A. and Tversky, B. (1996). Perspective in Spatial Descriptions, Journal of Memory & Language 35: 371–391.
Tipper, S.P. and Behrmann, M. (1996). Object-Centered not Scene-Based Visual Neglect, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 22: 1261–1278.
Werner, S. and Schmidt, K. (1999). Environmental Reference Systems for Large-scale Spaces, Spatial Cognition and Computation 1(4): 447–473.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tversky, B., Lee, P. & Mainwaring, S. Why do speakers mix perspectives?. Spatial Cognition and Computation 1, 399–412 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010091730257
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010091730257