Regional differences in spatial frame of reference systems for people in different areas of China.

Levinson defined spatial frame of reference systems into three types and found that people who spoke different languages all over the world had different habits in the use of these systems. Some quasi-experimental designed research in China suggested that Chinese people in various areas had different preferences for frame of reference systems in nonlinguistic spatial tasks. In this study, a newly designed and strictly controlled laboratory experiment was conducted to measure performance on linguistic spatial tasks. Response times of two groups of participants, respectively selected from the north (10 men and 12 women; M age = 24 yr., SD = 4) and south (11 men and 12 women; M age = 24 yr., SD = 3) of China, were compared on processing of spatial terms used in different systems: absolute (e.g., east) versus relative (e.g., right). To reduce the effect of living experience, the Northern participants with less than 4 yr. living experience in the south of China were included, and vice versa. Analysis showed that Southerners, but not Northerners, differed in response times to terms between absolute and relative systems. This finding suggests that speed of processing spatial terms differs among people who speak the uniform language Mandarin but live in geographically distinct home areas in China and use different frame of reference systems.