Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Demonstratives are among the most frequent words in all languages, but demonstrative systems vary considerablybetween languages. In two experiments, we tested demonstrative use and the influence of demonstratives on spatial memory inJapanese and English – languages with purportedly very different demonstrative systems. Participants engaged in a ‘memorygame’, tapping their use of demonstratives to describe objects located on a sagittal plane (Experiment 1) and the influenceof demonstratives on memory for object location (Experiment 2). In addition to distance from speaker, the experiments alsomanipulated the position of a conspecific (next to or opposite participants). Distance and position of conspecific both affecteddemonstrative choice and memory in Japanese, with similar effects in English even though English does not explicitly encodethe position of a conspecific. We discuss possible universals underlying demonstrative systems and the influence of languageon memory.