Linguistic and cultural universality of the concept of sense-of-direction

Abstract

We analyze self-reported sense-of-direction in samples of people from Santa Barbara, Freiburg, Saarbrücken, Tokyo, and Beijing. The Santa Barbara Sense-of-Direction Scale (SBSOD) by Hegarty and colleagues primarily assesses survey spatial abilities in directly-experienced environments. It was translated into German, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. Results suggest sense-of-direction is a unitary and meaningful concept across the five samples and four languages. In four of the samples, males report significantly better sense-of-direction than do females. Some variations are found across the five samples in overall level of sense-of-direction and in response patterns across the 15 items. Because it is strongly related to the survey spatial thinking that primarily underlies sense-of-direction, and because it can be counted in a relatively straightforward manner, we specifically examine thinking in terms of cardinal directions as a component of sense-of-direction, including conducting a count of cardinal-direction words from Internet corpora in the four languages. We find support for sense-of-direction as a coherent concept across the four languages and as a useful tool to measure individual differences in sense-of-direction. We also consider linguistic/cultural variations in sense-of-direction, especially with respect to variations in physical environments. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.