Abstract: The study adopted the paradigm of the viewer’s rotation initiated by Levinson, explored the effects of spatial expression habits on people’s non-linguistic spatial cognition. The subjects were the undergraduates from both south and north China. The results showed a great difference between the south and the north that Southerners incline to use relative egocentric frame (left, right, front, back) while Northerners use absolute reference frame (east, west, north, south) as spatial reference in the same non-linguistic spatial cognitive task. The difference of reference frames is consistent with the habits of spatial expression. It suggested that spatial language habits do affect non-linguistic spatial cognition.

Key words: spatial language habits, spatial cognition, linguistic relativity