Pointing to distant locations in the Australian outback
What is it about?
Australian Aboriginal people are well known for their ability to point accurately to distant locations. This tendency can seem uncanny to city dwellers who often struggle to indicate true directions. We show how speakers of two Australian Aboriginal languages and non-Aboriginal speakers of Australian English in the remote Australian outback can point accurately over enormous distances, despite having access to different linguistic tools for spatial reference. This suggests that it is the sociocultural connections that people have with the environment, not language alone, that ultimately determines their capacity to point accurately to the places around them.
Why is it important?
We show that the Australian Aboriginal speakers and the non-Aboriginal speakers of Australian English mostly refer to locations using landmarks and by pointing. Our findings do not support the idea that the ability to point accurately is an outcome of language alone.