Abstract:

There are two different views on the relationships between language and cognition: one is Linguistic Universalism, which declares that language is only the input or output of thinking, and that differences in language do not affect consistency of cognition; the other is Linguistic Relativism, which asserts that language affects cognition, and that people who speak different languages may have different styles of cognition. This kind of controversy also exists with respect to the relationships between spatial terms and spatial cognition. Some researchers believe that human could universally share spatial cognition, but others believe that different languages could produce different spatial cognitions and different spatial experiences. Owing to the blind people loss sight, they may possess different space concepts and concept structure of space words. How do blind people organize the space words? This study investigated the space concepts and their organization in the case of blind children. 63 blind children of Guangzhou Blind School took part in the experiment. They were asked to sort 17 pairs of Chinese spatial terms summarized by Yi-Fu Tuan into groups, according to the terms’ similarities. The groupings were subject to a Multi-Dimensional Scaling analysis and a Hierarchical Clustering analysis, in order to reveal the blind children’ spatial cognitive themes and spatial concept constructions. The results showed that there were two dimensions in the semantic spaces of the space words of the blind children：⑴state and direction；⑵geo-center and body-center. The blind children showed four space cognition themes：⑴three-dimensional direction around body；⑵ space distance；⑶three-dimensional boundaries；⑷space states. The concept structures of spatial words of the congenital blind children and the postnatal blind children were similar basically, but there were some differences among them, the concept structures of spatial words of the congenital blind children emerged the dimension of vertical/horizontal. This kind of result pattern also could be found between primary school blind children and middle school blind children, but owing to different reasons. The entire study showed that Lacking of visual perception determined the nature of space terms organization by blind children , but language , culture and education play important parts in blind people’s spatial cognitive themes and spatial concept structure also.

Key words: blind children, space concept, space cognition

摘要：

以63名盲童为被试, 对17对空间词作相似性的分类。结果表明：⑴盲童的空间词概念结构有两个维度：①状态/方位；②自身参照/他物参照。⑵盲童的空间认知围绕着4个主题：①身体周围的三维方位；②空间距离；③三维边界；④空间状态。⑶视觉的缺失决定着盲童的空间词组织的特点, 语言、文化和教育对盲童的空间概念及其组织也具有重要影响。

关键词: 盲童, 空间词, 空间认知