Article

Culture & Psychology

2018, Vol. 24(3) 327–342
Quasi-experimental ! The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
research in culture sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1354067X18779043
sensitive psychology journals.sagepub.com/home/cap

Pierre R. Dasen
Université de Genève, Switzerland

Ramesh C. Mishra
Banaras Hindu University, India

Jürg Wassmann
Universit€at Heidelberg, Germany

Abstract
The research presented in this article follows up on several aspects of Gustav Jahoda’s
long and fruitful career: (1) his early fieldwork on cognitive development in Africa,
particularly in the area of spatial skills; (2) his interest in cross-cultural psychology as
a research method; and (3) his insistence on bringing anthropology and psychology
together. The topic of our research is the development of a so-called “geocentric”
frame of spatial reference. This is a cognitive style, in which individuals describe and
represent small-scale table-top space in terms of large-scale geographic dimensions. We
explore the development with age of geocentric language and cognition, and the rela-
tionships between the two. We also explore the many environmental and socio-cultural
variables that favor the use of this frame. We demonstrate how we untangled several of
these variables by using a succession of within-society group comparisons, in several
societies where a geocentric frame is in common usage (Bali, Indonesia, India, and
Nepal). Our research program unfolds like a detective story, where one finding that
is difficult to interpret because of several confounded variables leads to another quasi-
experimental group comparison that suggests another hypothesis, which is then tested
in a further session of field-work. In each case, we emphasize how important it was to
have extensive linguistic and ethnographic knowledge before implementing psycholog-
ical tests. The research design is not cross-cultural as such (we hardly ever perform

Corresponding author:
Pierre R. Dasen, 2023 rue de Pitegny, Gex, 01170, France.
Email: pierre.dasen@unige.ch
328 Culture & Psychology 24(3)

comparisons between societies), but culturally sensitive within a series of societies;

in other words, as Dasen and Jahoda (1986, p. 413) defined it, “cross-cultural devel-
opmental psychology is not just comparative: essentially it is an outlook that takes
culture seriously.”

Keywords
Spatial language and cognition, child development, (cross-)cultural psychology,
methodology, cognitive style

Gustav Jahoda’s legacy

Gustav Jahoda has always been concerned with the validity and reliability of cross-
cultural research, i.e., with methods and not only findings. For example, Frijda
and Jahoda (1966) provided a thoughtful analysis of the methodological problems
confronted in cross-cultural research, which, they wrote “is like virtue—everybody
is in favour of it, but there are widely differing views as to what it is and ought to
be” (p. 122). Among many suggestions, they point out that cross-cultural research
should be done by “indigenous research assistants [trained] to the level where they
can operate independently (. . .), but this is no real substitute for fully-fledged
researchers within various cultures, able to conduct a complete project from the
planning stage onward” (p. 120). The authors also criticise comparisons between
only two groups and research carried out in locations chosen for convenience
reasons rather than on theoretical grounds. Furthermore, “cross-cultural compar-
isons may have to be supplemented by intra-cultural comparisons” (p. 123).
Gustav Jahoda’s own early cross-cultural field-work covered a wide range of
subjects, in social and developmental psychology, or combining the two, for exam-
ple, in the study of the development of concepts of nationality and children’s ideas
about economics (covered in this special issue by Markova and Jesuino). In the
cognitive area, he dealt with visual illusions and pictorial representation and with
spatial abilities. One of his main interests was to find out which factors influenced
the performance on a standard psychological test, the Kohs blocks, taken by
psychologists either as an assessment of spatial-perceptual skills or one of general
intelligence. He focused in particular on orientations errors. Jahoda (1976) hypoth-
esized that these could be linked to the concept of horizontality as assessed by
Piaget, but the data suggested that the key factor could be psychological differen-
tiation (field dependence/independence). This was disconfirmed in a later study
(Jahoda, 1978), which assessed the impact of pattern difficulty, and led to the
conclusion that “variations in the manner subjects perceived the nature of the
task appeared as a major determinant of cross-cultural differences” (p. 45). Task
demands (copying a model constructed with blocks with the model present, or only
seen for 5 seconds, or from a photograph or a line drawing) were explored by
Dasen et al. 329

Jahoda (1979), who concluded that Africans do not have a general disability in
handling spatial relations, but experience difficulty mainly with two-dimensional
representations.
In this study, and in Jahoda (1980), he raised the issue of sex or gender differ-
ences as they interact (or not) with ethnic/cultural differences and raised questions
about environmental influences (such as gender socialization and stimulation by
schooling) vs. ontogenetic changes such as hormonal levels, claiming that the data
argued more in favor of the latter. This sequence of studies is interesting because
Jahoda and his colleagues pursue one issue, cultural and sex differences in spatial
skills, with each study remaining ambiguous in terms of conclusions, but leading to
more questions, which are then followed up in subsequent research. Unfortunately,
contrary to the advice he had given himself (e.g., in Frijda & Jahoda, 1966), in
most of these studies “culture” is reduced to a comparison between Scottish and
African samples from different countries (Ghana, Zimbabwe) without any justifi-
cation for their selection other than the availability of researchers. Furthermore,
much of the hypotheses regarding sex differences are based on the assumption of a
stronger gender socialization in Scotland because boys are given technological
toys, without a corresponding ethnographic observation of gender socialization
in the corresponding African contexts.
In 1988, he provided a critical summary of cross-cultural research on that topic
(Jahoda, 1988), including his own work, in which he regrets the piecemeal, non-
comparable and non-cumulative character of most of this research. He argues for a
research program that would consist of “large-scale experimental studies that
cover a wide age span, from childhood into late adolescence” (pp. 153–154),
“and this, obviously, in a cross-cultural design, because socialization practices,
in particular, are likely to be uniform in a single society” (p. 152). He thought,
in particular, of training studies that could be carried out through experimental
school programs.
Another topic that has occupied Gustav Jahoda throughout his career is the
relationship between anthropological and psychological research. In a major
volume (Jahoda, 1982), he not only retraces the history of those disciplines and
their interactions but strongly argues that the two, while conflicting at times in
their methods, can be very fruitfully combined.
A recent example of such fruitful interdisciplinary interaction is the research
project “Person, space and memory in the contemporary Pacific” headed by
Wassmann. A volume concerning theories of mind was edited by Wassmann,
Tr€auble, and Funke (2013) with a foreword by Jahoda (2013). Five interdisciplin-
ary research teams have investigated five Pacific societies; the leading research
question was when children in these five different cultures come to assign mental
states to others and the role of cultural impact in this development. In some Pacific
societies, there is a concept of “opacity of minds,” i.e., that it is impossible to know
what goes on in another person’s mind. Children are socialized accordingly to hide
aspects of the self from others. In the epilogue to this book, Wassmann and Funke
(2013) conclude that theories of mind are, like the rest of cognition, best
330 Culture & Psychology 24(3)

formulated as a cognitive style: “In other words: The cognitive competence exists,
yet, and this is decisive, due to cultural reasons it can be made visible only at a later
stage or can be entirely unwanted” (p. 241).
Wassmann and Funke (2013) also discuss several methodological issues of such
interdisciplinary research, including its problems, and state that “by no means
should a division of tasks leave the content to cultural anthropology and the
method to psychology” (p. 250). Another survey of the methodological interface
between psychology and anthropology was produced by Mishra and Dasen (2007),
and a detailed discussion, focusing on the collaborative research carried out over
the years by Wassmann and Dasen, appears in Dasen (2017).
In the main part of this paper, we describe a research project that follows up
very closely, we believe, on the pioneer work of Gustav Jahoda. The topic of the
research is spatial cognition, studied developmentally, and we examine the impact
of a variety of socio-cultural and personal variables similar to those Jahoda was
interested in. Our research program consists of a series of interlocking field studies,
each answering some questions but leading to others. The locations and samples
have been chosen in order to provide the opportunity not only of studying vari-
ables of interest, but to “un-confound” variables that are inextricably linked in
research limited to one particular society (or several similar societies, such as
Western industrial countries).1 In each field site, we were careful to collect exten-
sive ethnographic and linguistic information as a basis for the psychological meth-
ods. However, this fit with Gustav Jahoda’s ideas and interests was not explicit
when we planned and carried out the project; it comes more as an afterthought. We
therefore choose to report the study without explicit reference to Jahoda, but will
come back to discussing the links in a final section.

Un-confounding variables
Cross-cultural psychology as a research method sometimes allows this
un-confounding of variables. For example, in developmental psychology, because
most children go to school and move through a similar curriculum at about the
same ages, it is impossible to distinguish the variables of chronological age (mat-
uration) and the effects of schooling. We therefore need to find a social context in
which some children go to school and others do not. This used to be fairly common
in many parts of the world, although access to education was often linked itself to
other variables (gender, income, rural vs. urban settings, etc.). In our research
program, as we will see below, we were still able to use this strategy in India
and Nepal in the last decade of the 20th century, but we later turned to comparing
different types of schooling. Comparing groups as they occur naturally is called
“quasi-experimental” because individuals are not assigned to these groups at
random, a basic requirement in experimental psychology. The groups to be com-
pared are carefully chosen so as to differ, as much as possible, only on the variable
of interest. The advantage of the method, compared to experimental research, is its
ecological validity.
Dasen et al. 331

In our research program (Dasen & Mishra, 2010), we used the quasi-
experimental strategy repeatedly in order to tease out the various eco-cultural,
social, and linguistic variables that influence the development of a particular spa-
tial cognitive style, the geocentric frame of reference (FoR), to be described below.
We start with the puzzling results of some research we carried out in Bali
(Indonesia) in 1994, where we found a very precocious development of this geo-
centric frame, followed by an increase of the egocentric one. Because we worked
with one single (and rather small) sample, it was not clear whether this result
represented a stage reversal (in Piagetian terms—and this would have been a
scoop!), or whether the increase with age of the egocentric frame was linked to
the confounded factors of schooling in Indonesian and increasing urban contact.
Follow-up research in India, Nepal, and again in Bali, comparing various sub-
groups within each cultural area (schooled and un-schooled, urban and rural,
bilingualism with English or Indonesian, different types of schooling) allows us
to tease out the various factors and their interactions.

Spatial language and frames of reference (FoR): The geocentric

vs. egocentric cognitive style
According to Levinson (2003), three frames of reference can be used to describe the
location of objects in a restricted, so-called table-top space: intrinsic, egocentric
(sometimes called relative), and geocentric (also called absolute or allocentric).
This corresponds roughly to what Piaget and Inhelder (1956) termed topological,
projective, and Euclidean space, or according to Taylor and Tversky (1996), space
centered on the object, on the person, and on the environment. In the intrinsic/
topological frame, which seems to be universal and develops very early in children
(cf. Jahoda, Deregowski, & Sinha, 1974), objects are situated in reference to each
other (next to, near, inside, to the nose of the car, etc.). The egocentric frame uses
the point of view of the speaker, using mainly right and left, and is favored in many
languages, including Indo-European, Japanese, and Indonesian. The geocentric
frame makes use of distant geographic features (to the mountain/sea; uphill/down-
hill) or coordinates (cardinal directions NSEW) to speak about local table space,
including inside a room. In Bali, for example, Bahasa Indonesian tends to use the
egocentric frame: “put the knife to the right and the fork to the left of the plate,”
which might be translated in traditional Balinese as “Put the knife to the mountain
and the fork to the sea.”
Most languages allow the use of all three frames of reference, but show a pref-
erence for one or the other. This is why we speak of a “cognitive style”: all cog-
nitive processes are potentially available, but a series of personal and contextual
circumstances determine which frame is more likely to be chosen. Thus, in Euro-
American societies, the geocentric frame is often used for travel over large dis-
tances but never spontaneously inside of a room. Levinson (2003) and his team of
anthropological linguists have found a number of languages in which the
332 Culture & Psychology 24(3)

preference for the geocentric frame is very strong. This preference is evident not
only in the vocabulary but also in non-verbal cognition. Levinson’s team has
designed a number of tests that allow to determine which frame of reference is
being used for spatial representation (which is what we call spatial encoding).
To give an example, in the test called “Animals in a row,” the informant is
presented with three toy animals aligned on a table, all three looking in the same
direction. The experimenter says “Look at these animals. You will have to remem-
ber them and put them in the same way on the other table,” the second table being
placed at some distance and with a rotation of 180
. If the animals were looking
right on the first table, and the informant aligns them also to the right after turning
around, s/he is probably using the egocentric FoR. If s/he makes them look to the
left, s/he has more likely encoded the situation in the geocentric mode: “The
animals looked to the mountain on the first table, they also look to the mountain
on the second.”
In our research, we have systematically used this test along with two others also
devised by Levinson (2003) and his team, “Chips” and “Steve’s Maze.” In the
former, the experimenter shows a card with two geometric shapes, for example a
small circle above a larger one, and asks the informant to find the same card
among a choice of four (each with a different orientation) on the second table,
after a 180
or 90
rotation. In the latter, the informant is shown an outline map
with an incomplete path on the first table, and a choice of complementary paths on
the second (one representing an egocentric solution, one a geocentric one, and a
third irrelevant option). Each test consists of at least five items; the score being the
proportion of items in which a particular FoR is used. Furthermore, we system-
atically used three spatial language elicitation tasks, also inspired by the work of
Levinson’s (2003) team. In all the locations, the tasks had the same format,
although local adaptations were made (e.g., in the familiarity of the toy animals).
Extensive pre-testing was carried out to ascertain the appropriateness of the tasks
and the instructions, always presented in the informants’ preferred language. The
details of the methodology can be found in Dasen and Mishra (2010).

First study in Bali, 1994

In Bali, the traditional orientation system (KKKK) uses two orthogonal axes:
Kaja, to the mountain, and Kelod, to the sea, as the main axis, and Kangin/Kauh
at 90
. The latter terms are difficult to translate. In the South of the island, Gunung
Agung, the central volcano (and dwelling place of the gods) is situated North and
the sea South, Kangin is where the sun rises, and Kauh were it sets. As one moves
around the island, Kaja keeps to be directed to the central mountain, until Kaja
and Kelod are completely reversed on the North coast of Bali. The axis Kangin/
Kauh follows suit, hence detached from the rising or setting sun, until suddenly,
between two villages on the NE coast, the two terms are reversed. Hence, the
Balinese KKKK orientation system is clearly geocentric, but, contrary to compass
cardinal directions, it is adapted to the local topography.
Dasen et al. 333

Wassmann and Dasen (1996, 1998) first established the local use of the orien-
tation system by studying it in different locations, on the coast and inside of the
island. We also studied the spontaneous spatial language in everyday situations,
such as when playing games or when adults give instructions to children. We then
elicited spatial language more systematically by using some of Levinson’s methods.
We did find that the Balinese linguistic preference was for geocentric terms, ego-
centric ones being restricted to body parts, except in urban areas, where they are
also used to give directions. By first establishing in detail what people do, and what
they say, and this in various segments of the population we were following the
methodological rules we had established in previous collaborative research in
Papua New-Guinea between Wassmann, the anthropologist, and Dasen the psy-
chologist (Wassmann & Dasen, 1994a, 1994b). In particular, more constraining
situations, such as tasks or tests—which are almost inevitable in most psycholog-
ical research—are to be used only once their ecological validity can be established
through such ethnographic and linguistic documentation.
In this first study, we used Animals and Steve’s Maze with a sample of 38
children (4 to 14 years old) and adults. Results are presented in Table 1.
Geocentric encoding is stronger on Animals than on Steve’s Maze. Such task
specificity is an interesting finding in itself. According to the strong linguistic rel-
ativism proposed by Levinson (2003), individuals speaking a language where the
geocentric FoR is preferred should use this frame systematically in all situations. In
a weaker form of linguistic relativism such as our theory of cognitive styles, the
choice of a FoR may be linked to the test situation, and in particular on how easy
it is to encode a particular display linguistically. For Animals, it is easy to encode
“All animals look to the mountain” while on Steve’s Maze, one has to remember
the shape of the missing path, which is much more iconic, and is often remembered
by tracing the shape with a finger.
Looking at the choice of FoR with age, the overall impression is that young
children (aged 4–8 years) start with 100% geocentric encoding, which then remains
the predominant mode, but with an increase of the egocentric frame. Does this
represent a reversal of the Piagetian stages, with an early development of Euclidean
(geocentric) space, followed only later by projective (egocentric) components? This
would be a remarkable finding, because in all of the cross-cultural research using
Piaget’s theory, differences in the rates of development are often reported, but

Table 1. Percentage of geocentric encoding in Bali (1994).

Age groups N Animals Steve’s Maze

4–5 9 96 –
6–8 8 80 58
9–11 7 73 58
12–14 þ adults 14 86 49
Total 38
334 Culture & Psychology 24(3)

never any reversal of stages, a conclusion that has not changed since the review by
Dasen and Heron (1981).
However, there are several methodological problems with this first study.
Steve’s Maze proved to be impossible to use reliably with the very young children.
Even with Animals, the task had sometimes to be simplified, reducing it to two toy
animals. Generally speaking, it is very difficult to use such tests reliably at that age,
not only in Bali, but everywhere, including in Geneva schools (cf. Dasen & Mishra,
2010). However, if we cannot be confident about the results in this age group, the
precocity of geocentric encoding becomes questionable and the increase of egocen-
tric encoding with age less striking. If we nevertheless try to interpret this age
trend, it could be due to the increased influence of schooling (which, in Bali,
uses Bahasa Indonesian, which favors egocentric references) and/or the increasing
contact with urban life, where egocentric references are used more frequently.

First study in India and Nepal, 1999–2000

We therefore found ourselves in the situation where different confounded variables
could explain the results. Furthermore, the sample was really very small, even
though the data collection had kept us busy for several weeks. Clearly, the research
had to be replicated with larger samples and more numerous language elicitation
and non-verbal encoding tasks. To do this in Bali was not possible at that time, but
a second large scale research program was set up in India with Ramesh Mishra and
in Nepal with Shanta Niraula. Keeping to the large age range of 4 to 14 years, we
were able to test 191 children in a village in India, 178 in the city of Benares, and
176 in a village in Nepal, each sample being stratified with equal numbers of boys
and girls, and schooled and completely unschooled children. In this part of India,
the dominant orientation system is based on cardinal directions (NSEW), which is
used almost exclusively in rural areas, while in the city, egocentric references are
used as well, particularly when giving directions. In rural Nepal, the common
orientation system is based on two sectors of 180
, uphill and downhill, more
precision being given by using local landmarks.
The details of the procedures and the results have been published in Dasen and
Mishra (2010). In a few words, what we found was an overall preference for
the geocentric FoR, with an increase of its use over age in all sub-groups, its use
becoming almost exclusive after age 9 in rural samples, while a quarter of the city
children choose egocentric references. Hence, there is no evidence of a reversal of
stages, although one might evoke a specific path of development in which the
geocentric FoR does appear early. There were no gender differences, nor any
marked differences between schooled and unschooled children. Clearly, the acqui-
sition of spatial frames in language and in cognition occurs in daily life and the
family circle, and is not dependent on schooling. The only difference brought
about by schooling was in rural Nepal, where the older schooled children would
use the cardinal directions taught in school instead of the traditional system.
Dasen et al. 335

Second study in Bali, 2002

In 2002, Wassmann and Dasen were able to organise a large scale replication study
in Bali, with access to schools, and two main samples (4 to 12 years) in the North
of the island, 72 children in a small city and 98 in a nearby village. We also
returned briefly to the location of the first study, testing 33 children aged 4
to 8 years.
At what age do the Balinese children learn to use the traditional (KKKK)
orientation system, and the cardinal points system (NSEW) taught in school?
We simply asked the children, first outside and then inside of a school room,
“Show me Kaja” or “Show me North,” and so on, going through all eight possi-
bilities as well as the egocentric references (right, left, in front, behind). In the
village, the traditional system is used correctly even at age 4, which confirms the
precocity of this acquisition found in our first study. The cardinal directions in
Bahasa Indonesian are learned progressively, and are used correctly by age 9. In
the city, the learning of both systems occurs concurrently, but is much slower, and
is still not systematically correct at age 11–12 years.
A similar difference between the urban and rural samples is found on three
spatial encoding tasks. The results are presented in Figure 1.
The urban/rural difference is quite systematic for all three tasks and all age
groups. The results also confirm the task specificity, with Chips eliciting most
geocentric encoding. For Animals2 and Chips, geocentric encoding increases
with age, while it decreases on Steve’s Maze.
Why is a geocentric system more functional in a rural setting? In this particular
case, the village was located on the mountain slope, so both the mountain top and

Figure 1. Percentage of geocentric encoding (“R-A gradient”) on three tasks, Animals

(four animals), Chips and Steve’s Maze, urban and rural samples.
336 Culture & Psychology 24(3)

the sea were clearly visible and much easier to locate than in the city. But the rural/
urban difference was also found in India. Generally speaking, in a city, and unless
the streets are organized at right angles and aligned on the geocentric system, it is
easier to think of turning right or left. Note that the Balinese often combine both
frames: “Turn left, towards the mountain.” Furthermore, the traditional Balinese
orientation system is linked to the traditional and religious world view, where
everything, from the orientation of temples to the organisation of individual
houses, as well as religious and domestic rituals, are oriented in the KKKK
system. The respect for these traditions is greater in rural than urban areas. But
again, some variables are confounded, because urban families also tend to have a
higher socio-economic level, more formal education, more contact with the media
of newspapers and television, and are more likely to speak Bahasa Indonesian.
In our second study in Bali, we were able to tease some of these variables apart.
While all Balinese children are schooled in Bahasa Indonesian, and are therefore
bilingual with Balinese, some have a preference for one language or the other. In
the village, all children except three spoke Balinese in their family environments,
while for 15 children (21%) in the city, it was Indonesian. On our testing sessions,
we gave them the choice: 19% preferred the school language, 53% Balinese, and
28% a mixture of the two. This variable of language preference is correlated with
the urban/rural split (r=0.67, p < 0.01), but can nevertheless be extracted in sta-
tistical analyses. Thus, the children who prefer Balinese and speak it at home are
those who, from the age of 4, have a perfect command of the KKKK system,
use geocentric language systematically and correctly, and tend to prefer geocentric
encoding. Those who prefer Indonesian tend to use intrinsic and egocentric terms
from 4 to 8 years, and only start to use geocentric references after the age of 9.
Structural equation modeling (Amos) on our data shows a coherent picture in
which a virtual variable of “traditional culture” combines the urban/rural contact,
language preference, knowledge of the traditional orientation system, and socio-
economic indicators. It is the main variable, together with age, that determines the
use of geocentric language and encoding. The importance of traditional Balinese
culture is further shown by the fact that very young children in the remote location
of our first study did show even more geocentric encoding (on Animals), although
the percentage was below the 100% found in 1994.

Second study in India and Nepal, 2002–2004

To further tease out relevant eco-cultural variables, we continued research in India
and Nepal. In the city of Benares, we tested 155 pupils of Sanskrit schools and 221
in a Hindi school, in the age range 11 to 15. The Hindi school was a semi-private
school in which Hindi is used as the language of instruction, English being taught
as a second language. The curriculum follows state government prescriptions.
The Sanskrit schools train boys (and one of them girls) in Sanskrit language.
The curriculum also includes history, geography, literature, etc. and in particular
Hindu religion, including a variety of rituals, meditation and yoga. Some of the
Dasen et al. 337

pupils are expected to become priests. Sanskrit has the particularity of using ten
named cardinal directions, and many of the rituals are strictly oriented according
to this geocentric system.
As expected, school type (Sanskrit vs. Hindi) turned out to be the strongest
predictor of geocentric language and encoding, confirming the impact of tradition-
al religious practices (Vajpayee, Dasen, & Mishra, 2008). Note that, in quasi-
experimental research, variables often remain linked. In this case, the Sanskrit
pupils tended to come from rural areas before attending these specialized schools,
so the rural/urban dimension returns as a contributing variable. In this part of the
study (as well as in the next one in Kathmandu), we explored relationships with
several other variables, among which other cognitive aspects of spatial ability,
which we cannot detail here (see Dasen & Mishra, 2010).
In Nepal, we pursued the question of bilingualism, in particular the situation
where the school language seems to favor the egocentric frame. We tested 400
pupils aged 4 to 12 in Kathmandu, half of the sample in government schools
where teaching occurs in Nepali (which favors the geocentric frame of cardinal
directions), and half in private schools where English is the language of instruction.
This study again confirmed the contrast between rural and urban environments: in
Kathmandu, children do use some egocentric spatial language whereas none was
found in the previous study in a Nepalese village. However, with age, the use of
geocentric language increases, and so does geocentric encoding.
Following our results in Bali on the example of Bahasa Indonesian, we expected
that the pupils taught in English would use more egocentric language and cogni-
tion but our hypothesis was disconfirmed: In fact, the pupils in the English medium
schools produced more and not less geocentric encoding. This puzzling result could
be explained (albeit post-hoc!) by the fact that the curriculum is essentially iden-
tical in all schools; even in the English-medium schools, cardinal directions are
explicitly taught. The teachers themselves being native Nepali speakers, with
English only as a second language, seem to convey the geocentric orientation
system in the same way as those teaching in Nepali. Another contributing factor
may be that the families that send their children to private schools tend to be of
higher socio-economic strata, and these families tend to spend more time on Hindu
religious rituals in the home—in which, as we know from the research in Sanskrit
schools, cardinal directions are important.

Geneva, Switzerland
Note that, so far, we have only used comparisons between sub-groups within
geographical and cultural regions and no comparisons between wide-ranging cul-
tures or countries, as is usual in cross-cultural psychology. No doubt we could
have compared the results in Bali, India and Nepal more directly, because our
research tools were sufficiently standardized, on the one hand, but also locally
adapted to insure their eco-cultural validity. In fact, what we have is a series of
intra-cultural studies, the sub-groups being selected each time according to the
338 Culture & Psychology 24(3)

research questions we were trying to answer. Curiosity however led us to carry out
the same study in Geneva, Switzerland, where the school language is French,
although 45 out of the sample of 75 children (aged 4 to 12) were themselves
bilingual with other mainly European languages. In Geneva, it was no surprise
to find that the FoR is completely egocentric for both language and cognition, with
no marked age trend (and no impact of bilingualism). In a way, this result could be
interpreted as demonstrating the complete absence of a cognitive process in a
particular cultural context. We still prefer an interpretation in terms of cognitive
styles, i.e., that this exclusive use of the egocentric FoR is culturally determined,
while the use of a geocentric one remains possible. This is demonstrated by
research in France conducted by Troadec (e.g., Troadec, Martinot, & Cottereau-
Reiss, 2002; Courrèges & Troadec, 2009) who finds that French children can be
induced to use allocentric references either by suggesting them in the instructions,
or through training procedures.

Discussion
We conclude from this series of studies that the geocentric FoR does appear very
early (4–5 years in our studies, but it could be earlier—we did not have the tech-
niques to test younger children), in particular situations where the traditional cul-
ture fosters it through the language addressed to children and daily routines,
including religious practices. This we found in particular in the rural areas of
Bali, India, and Nepal. Instead of interpreting this as a reversal of stages, we
prefer to speak of a particular developmental path. In the same cultural groups,
city life and various acculturative features favor the intrinsic and egocentric FoR
for children up to about age 8, followed by an increase with age of the geocen-
tric FoR.
Compared to our first study in Bali, subsequent quasi-experimental studies in
various cultural contexts have allowed us to un-confound some of the eco-cultural,
social and individual variables that determine which FoR is given a preference. In
other words, seeing the egocentric vs. geocentric FoR as a cognitive style, each
extremity of this style being stressed in different circumstances.
We believe that this research program corresponds to what Jahoda (1988) asked
for in terms of a series of cumulative studies, with comparable methods. We carried
out these studies in different cultural settings, nevertheless avoiding wide-span
comparisons. In fact, studying the development of the geocentric FoR would be
simply impossible by staying in the European or North-American cultures
(as shown by its absence in our study in Geneva). In each of the locations, we
started with extensive linguistic and ethnographic enquiries, and we made sure that
the psychological instruments we finally used were indeed locally appropriate.
Hence, we believe that our research has not only taken into account the method-
ological principles Jahoda had established for cross-cultural psychology, but it
may be situated in the field of the type of “cultural psychology” that had his
Dasen et al. 339

preference in later years, or, as we phrase it in the title, culture sensi-

tive psychology.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article: The research was mainly funded by the Swiss
National Science Foundation.

Notes
1. Dasen (2016) presented this argument at the conference of the Association Internationale
de Recherche Interculturelle (ARIC) in Strasbourg, on the occasion of the 30th anniver-
sary of this association. Gustav Jahoda was granted honorary membership of ARIC.
2. It should be noted that in this study, we used four toy animals instead of only 3, one
being placed at right angle, and we added two items with a rotation of 90
between the
two tables. This eliminates spurious intrinsic encoding and provides a more reliable score.

References
Courrèges, S. & Troadec, S. (2009). Le développement des cadres de référence spatiale:
l’émergence d’une préférence culturelle [The development of spatial frames of reference:
the apparition of a cultural preference]. Bulletin de Psychologie, 6, 501–513.
Dasen, P.R. (2016). La psychologie interculturelle comparée comme laboratoire quasi-
expérimental [Comparative cross-cultural psychology as a quasi-experimental laborato-
ry]. In E Regnault & E Costa-Fernandez (Eds.). L’interculturel aujourd’hui: Perspectives
et enjeux [Interculturality today: Perspectives and issues], pp. 75–87. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Dasen, P. R. (2017). The trouble of having a psychologist sharing field work. In Alexis T.
Von Poser & Anita von Poser (Eds.), Facets of fieldwork. Essays in honor of Jürg
Wassmann (pp. 255–271). Heidelberg, Germany: Universit€atsverlag Winter.
Dasen, P. R., & Heron, A. (1981). Cross-cultural tests of Piaget’s theory. In H. C. Triandis
& A. Heron (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology. Vol. 4: Developmental psy-
chology (pp. 295–342). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Dasen, P. R., & Jahoda, G. (1986). Preface. Cross-cultural human development. Special
issue. International Journal of Behavioural Development, 9(4), 413–416.
Dasen, P. R., & Mishra, R. C. (2010). Development of geocentric spatial language and cog-
nition: An eco-cultural perspective. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Frijda, N., & Jahoda, G. (1966). On the scope and methods of cross-cultural research.
International Journal of Psychology, 1, 110–127.
Jahoda, G. (1976). Reproduction of Kohs-type figures by Ghanaian children: Orientation
errors revisited. British Journal of Psychology, 67, 203–211.
340 Culture & Psychology 24(3)

Jahoda, G. (1978). Cross-cultural study of factors influencing orientation errors in repro-

duction of Kohs-type figures. British Journal of Psychology, 69, 45–47.
Jahoda, G. (1979). On the nature of difficulties in spatial-perceptual tasks: Ethnic and sex
differences. British Journal of Psychology, 70, 351–363.
Jahoda, G. (1980). Sex and ethnic differences on a spatial-perceptual task: Some hypotheses
tested. British Journal of Psychology, 71, 425–431.
Jahoda, G. (1982). Psychology and anthropology: A psychological perspective. London,
England: Academic Press.
Jahoda, G. (1988). Les études comparatives sur la perception de l’espace [Comparative
studies of spatial perception]. In R. Bureau & D. de Saivre (Eds). Apprentissage et
Cultures [Learning and Cultures] (pp. 143–158). Paris: Karthala.
Jahoda, G. (2013). Foreword: How we got to where we are. In J. Wassmann, B. Tr€auble, &
J. Funke (Eds.), Theory of mind in the Pacific: Reasoning across cultures (pp. 5–12).
Heidelberg, Germany: Winter Universit€atsverlag.
Jahoda, G., Deregowski, J. B., & Sinha, D. (1974). Topological and Euclidean spatial
features noted by children. A cross-cultural study. International Journal of Psychology,
9, 159–172.
Levinson, S. (2003). Space in language and cognition: Explorations in cognitive diversity.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Mishra, R. C., & Dasen, P. R. (2007). The methodological interface of psychology and
anthropology. In J. Wassmann & K. Stockhaus (Eds.), Experiencing new worlds (pp.
21–35). Oxford, England: Berghahn.
Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1956). The child’s conception of space. London, England:
Routledge and Kegan Paul. (Original work published in 1948 in French)
Taylor, H. A., & Tversky, B. (1996). Perspective in spatial descriptions. Journal of Memory
and Language, 35, 371–391.
Troadec, B., Martinot, C., & Cottereau-Reiss, P. (2002). A cross-cultural study of diversity
in cognitive development: Categorization and space. In P. Boski, F. Van de Vijver, & M.
Chodynicka (Eds.), New directions of cross-cultural psychology (pp. 243–258). Warsaw,
Poland: Polish Academy of Sciences.
Vajpayee, A., Dasen, P. R., & Mishra, R. C. (2008). Spatial encoding: A comparison of
sanskrit- and hindi-medium schools. In J. Pandey & N. Srinivasa (Eds.) Advances in
cognitive science (pp. 255–265). New Delhi: SAGE.
Wassmann, J., & Dasen, P. R. (1994a). “Hot” and “cold”: Classification and sorting among
the Yupno of Papua New Guinea. International Journal of Psychology, 29, 19–38.
Wassmann, J., & Dasen, P. R. (1994b). Yupno number system and counting. Journal of
Cross-Cultural Psychology, 25, 78–94.
Wassmann, J., & Dasen, P. R. (1996). Comment ne pas perdre le Nord à Bali. Processus
cognitifs – Une combinaison de méthodes ethnographiques et psychologiques. [How not
to get lost in Bali. Cognitive processes – A combination of ethnographic and psycholog-
ical methods.] Bulletin de l’Acade´mie suisse des sciences humaines et sociales (SAGW/
ASSH) [Bulletin of the Swiss Academy for Humanities and Social Sciences](1, 2), 17–26,
13–16.
Wassmann, J., & Dasen, P. R. (1998). Balinese spatial orientation: Some empirical evidence
for moderate linguistic relativity. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute,
Incorporating Man (N.S.), 4, 689–711.
Dasen et al. 341

Wassmann, J., & Funke, J. (2013). Epilogue. Reflections on personhood and theory of mind.
In J. Wassmann, B. Tr€auble, & J. Funke (Eds.), Theory of mind in the Pacific. Reasoning
across cultures (pp. 233–256). Heidelberg, Germany: Universit€atsverlag Winter.
Wassmann, J., Tr€auble, B. & Funke, J. (Eds.). (2013). Theory of mind in the Pacific.
Reasoning across cultures. Heidelberg, Germany: Universit€atsverlag Winter.

Author biographies
Pierre R. Dasen is Professor Emeritus of anthropology of education and cross-
cultural psychology at the University of Geneva (Faculty of Psychology and
Educational Sciences). His field of expertise is cross-cultural developmental psy-
chology, and particularly culture and cognition. He has been a research assistant to
Jean Piaget at the University of Geneva, where he has been teaching for 20 years;
he has also been associated with the Australian National University, Université de
Montréal, University of Nairobi, and Universities of Nice, Fribourg, Lyon II and
EHESS in Paris. He has carried out research in Australia, Canada, Côte d’Ivoire,
Kenya and Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, India, and Nepal. P. Dasen has been
influential in founding the Association pour la Recherche Interculturelle (ARIC), a
francophone association for cross-cultural research. He is the co-author (with J
Berry, Y Poortinga, and M Segall) of two widely circulated textbooks of cross-
cultural psychology.

Ramesh C. Mishra (D. Phil., University of Allahabad) is a Professor Emeritus of

Psychology at Banaras Hindu University, India. He has been a Post-doctoral
Research Fellow and Shastri Research Fellow at Queen’s University, Canada,
and a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Konstanz (Germany) and Geneva
(Switzerland). He has also been a Fellow-in-Residence of the Netherlands Institute
of Advanced Study, Wassenaar (The Netherlands) and a Fulbright Scholar-in-
Residence at Wittenberg University, Springfield (USA). He is a Past President
and currently a Fellow of the National Academy of Psychology (India). His
research has focused on understanding ecological and cultural influences on
human development, and he has widely published in this area, both nationally
and internationally. He is the co-author of Ecology, Acculturation and
Psychological Adaptation: A Study of Adivasis in Bihar (SAGE), Development of
Geocentric Spatial Language and Cognition: An Eco-cultural Perspective
(Cambridge University Press), Ecology, Culture and Human Development:
Lessons for Adivasi Education (SAGE), and co-editor of Psychology in Human
and Social Development: Lessons from Diverse Cultures (SAGE).

Jürg Wassmann is Professor Emeritus of anthropology and former head of the

Institute of Anthropology, at the University of Heidelberg. His field area is Papua
New Guinea where he has carried out fieldwork among the Iatmul and the Yupno,
342 Culture & Psychology 24(3)

and Bali, Indonesia. His main research interests are culture and cognition,
memory, knowledge systems and concepts of personhood. He collaborated in
founding the European Society of Oceanists (ESFO) and was chair of the
Deutsche Gesellschaft für V€olkerkunde (DGV). Among recent books is
Wassmann, J (2016). The gently bowing person. An ideal among the Yupno in
Papua New Guinea. Heidelberg: Winter Universit€atsverlag (Heidelberg Studies in
Pacific Anthropology vol.4).