Cultural Factors in Spatial Orientation

Spatially, like temporally, coordinated patterns of behavior are basic to the personal adjustment of all human beings. They involve frmdamental dimensions of experience and are a necessary condition of psychological maturity and social living. Without the capacity for space perception, spatial orientation and the manipulation of spatial concepts, the human being would be incapable of effective locomotion, to say nothing of being unable to coordinate other aspects of his behavior with that of his fellows in a common sociallife. In addition to the psycho-physical and psycho-physiological conditions of human space perception, we know that variations occur, between one culture and another with respect to the selective emphasis given to the spatial relations and attributes of things, and degree of refinement that occurs in the concepts employed, and the reference points that are selected for spatial orientation. The human individual is always provided with some culturally constituted means that are among the conditions which enable him to participate with his fellows in a world whose spatial attributes are, in part, conceptualized and expressed in common terms. Ontogenetically, self-orientation, object-orientation, and spatia-temporal orientation are concomitantly developed during the process of socialization.