Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

When thinking about space, people preferentially adopt a particular frame of reference, anchoring spatial relations either egocentrically (to their bodies) or allocentrically (to external landmarks). These preferences are often shared within a community, raising the question of how private norms for spatial thinking are made public and thus shareable. We tested whether spontaneous co-speech gesture might be one route by which these norms are expressed. Participants (N = 62) were exposed to an implicit norm to adopt a particular frame of reference when reasoning spatially. They then solved a spatial puzzle and described their solution. When participants conveyed spatial information in their gestures, they adopted either an egocentric or an allocentric frame of reference. Critically, these gestural frames of reference were congruent with the local norm. Gesture thus reflects socially learned conventions for adopting a spatial frame of reference. We discuss implications for the propagation and perpetuation of implicit cultural norms.