ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the long-term impact on the development of the organism of the persistent and surrounding ecology, more usually termed the physical environment. The original procedure of analysing the cultural aids as adaptive to the ecology and mediating perceptual skill development has been retained. For language aids, it is argued that the presence of ‘geometrical spatial’ terms would assist in transmitting spatial and orienting concepts and information, and that their presence in a language would be consistent with the spatial demands placed on that group by their ecology. Within a functional model, one would expect to find content and technique related to the socialization goals of a particular cultural group. The major dependent variables were a tachistoscopic test of visual discrimination ability and three tests of spatial skill. The discrimination test consisted of a series of cards with india-ink figures on them, each with increasingly large gaps placed randomly in their sides.
