[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/)

# Boundaries and Prototypes in Categorizing Direction

## Details

**Authors** Mast, Vivien and Wolter, Diedrich and Klippel, Alexander and Wallgrün, Jan Oliver and Tenbrink, Thora

**Year** 2014

**Publisher** Spatial Cognition IX (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), Springer

**Kind of work** proceedings

**Discipline** Cognitive Science

**Secondary disciplines** Linguistics

**Applied** false

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11215-2_7) 
10.1007/978-3-319-11215-2_7

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To ask how non-linguistic concepts of direction, in which prototypical axes act as boundaries, are represented in language, and how people describe their categorization.

### Who or what was studied (sample)

Not read (participants not reported on the page consulted).

### How they did it (methods)

Not read; the page gives the abstract only.

### What they found (results)

Participants grouped directions in two distinct ways, prototype-based or boundary-based. Each strategy produced different linguistic and different non-linguistic patterns.

## Commentary

### In short

People sorting spatial directions follow either a prototype strategy or a boundary strategy, and the two strategies show up differently in the words they use and in their non-verbal responses.

### Response

The finding is about distinction: categories organized around a central exemplar versus around a dividing line. The fit is single-pattern and narrow, and the same dichotomy is already familiar in categorization research. Cognitive science is well represented on the site, so this adds little to breadth.

**Patterns it shows** D

Shows the structure is there

**Added** 2026-10-22

**How to cite this** Mast, Vivien and Wolter, Diedrich and Klippel, Alexander and Wallgrün, Jan Oliver and Tenbrink, Thora (2014). Boundaries and Prototypes in Categorizing Direction. Spatial Cognition IX (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), Springer.