Attentional Distribution and Spatial Language

Whether visual spatial attention can be split to several discontinuous locations concurrently is still an open and intensely debated question. We address this question in the domain of spatial language use by comparing two existing and three newly proposed computational models. All models are assessed regarding their ability to account for human acceptability ratings for how well a given spatial term describes the spatial arrangement of two functionally related objects. One of the existing models assumes that taking the functional relations into account involves split attention. All new models incorporate functional relations without assuming split attention. Our simulations suggest that not assuming split attention is more appropriate for taking the functional relations into account than assuming split attention. At the same time, the simulations raise doubt as to whether any of the models appropriately captures the impact of functional relations on spatial language use.