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What is Special About Body Based Reference Frame?

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Abstract

Classifying spatial frames of references have placed egocentric/body-based representations on muddy grounds. The traditional taxonomy places it under the deictic distinction while the Levinson’s terminology does not provide a special status for it but classifies it along with the relative frame of reference. Research from other areas of cognition has come up with other implied classifications that are motivated by the special role played by these egocentric representation(s). Tangled among such issues is the fuzzy distinction between egocentric and body based representations. The current paper takes up exactly this issue and proposes to sub classify egocentric representations into two different subtypes namely the first- and the second-order representations. The proposed distinction serves an essential purpose for understanding important cognitive processes like spatial transformation, mental perspective taking, and so on.

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Notes

  1. For the present concerns, such representations will be treated separately from any reference to the human body including the viewer’s perspective.

  2. Personal communication by Kessler .

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Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) grant managed through the Graduate School of the Centre of Excellence “Cognitive Interaction Technology”, University of Bielefeld, Germany.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Institute of Information Technology, Deoghat, Jhalwa, Allahabad, 211012, India

    Neha Khetrapal

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  1. Neha Khetrapal
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Correspondence to Neha Khetrapal.

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This paper was written while the author was at the Centre of Excellence “Cognitive Interaction Technology” and Faculty of Psychology and Sport Sciences, University of Bielefeld, Germany.

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Khetrapal, N. What is Special About Body Based Reference Frame?. Hum Stud 33, 221–227 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-010-9161-x

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