Using spatial terms to select an object

Our interactions with the world often involve selecting one object from a c luttered array of objects. One way to accomplish this is with language. For example, spatial terms, such as above, guide selection by specifying the p osition of one object (the located object) with respect to a second object (the reference object). Most of the work on the apprehension of spatial ter ms has examined displays that contain only these two objects. In the presen t paper, we examine how the presence of an extra object (a distractor) in t he display impacts apprehension. Consistent effects of distractor presence were obtained across acceptability-rating and speeded sentence/picture veri fication tasks. Importantly, these effects were independent of the placemen t of the distractor. These results suggest that the distractor has its infl uence during processes that spatially index and identify the located and re ference objects and that processes involved in computing the spatial term o perate only on these objects.