Using spatial terms to select an object

Abstract

Our interactions with the world often involve selecting one object from a cluttered array of objects. One way to accomplish this is with language. For example, spatial terms, such as above, guide selection by specifying the position of one object (the located object) with respect to a second object (the reference object). Most of the work on the apprehension of spatial terms has examined displays that contain only these two objects. In the present paper, we examine how the presence of an extra object (a distractor) in the display impacts apprehension. Consistent effects of distractor presence were obtained across acceptability-rating and speeded sentence/picture verification tasks. Importantly, these effects were independent of the placement of the distractor. These results suggest that the distractor has its influence during processes that spatially index and identify the located and reference objects and that processes involved in computing the spatial term operate only on these objects.