ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates whether, and if so, to what extent the non-linguistic and linguistic spatial conceptualizations of Western middle-class English and Danish infants, when compared to Indigenous 'primitive' Zapotec infants, concerning their abilities to imitate and to comprehend basic spatial relations can account for universal developmental processes. In fact, when compared to the results for the imitation task, the Danish children responded with three times as many IN as UNDER responses, whereas the Zapotec children, on the other hand, responded with slightly more ON responses than IN responses. The notion of linguistic relativity can only partially account for the cross-cultural differences expressed by the Danish and Zapotec children. Thus, the Zapotec children, in responding to the spatial relational imitation task might be said to be responding from a multi-functional cognitive habitus or habitual thought concerning the canonical functions of the basket.
