space

For human cognition, the void of space is treated as background, and the things in space as foreground. They are located in space with respect to a reference frame or reference objects that vary with the role of the space in thought or behavior. Which things, which references, which perspective depend on the function of those entities in context, on the task at hand. In human cognition, the spatial relations are typically qualitative, approximate, categorical, or topological, rather than metric or analog (p 1-2).