Distributed Cognition
From Jsarmi
- Object of Study: As a theory it is specifically tailored to understanding interactions among people and technologies.
- Goal: The theory of distributed cognition, like any cognitive theory, seeks to understand the organization of cognitive systems
- Unit of Analysis: a culturally constituted functional group (rather than an individual)
- Some Key Definitions:
- Information is reconceptualized as the propagation of representational states of mediating structures that make up the dynamic and substance of any complex system.
- Mediating structures include internal and external knowledge representations (knowledge, skills, tools, etc.)
- Knowledge generation can be traced through the movement of representation states in a system. This tracing characterizes the organization of the system that affords performance, as individual member and as a functioning group.
Contents |
Two Central Principles
- Principle 1. About the boundaries of the unit of analysis for cognition.
Distributed cognition does not expect all cognitive events to be encompassed by the skin or skull of an individual.
- Principle 2. About the range of mechanisms that count as cognition.
Distributed cognition concerns itself with a broader class of cognitive events which go beyond the internal manipulation of symbols. Cognitive processes in the “wild”are characterized by “functional relationships” among diverse elements that participate together in them. In distributed cognition, one expects to find a system that can dynamically configure itself to bring subsystems into coordination to accomplish various functions.
Three dimensions of distribution
- Cognitive processes may be distributed across the members of a social group.
- Cognitive processes may involve coordination between internal and external (material or environmental) structure.
- Processes may be distributed through time in such a way that the products of earlier events can transform the nature of later events.
Social Interaction: Cognition distributed across agents/Human Mediation
Cognitive processes are socially distributed across the members of a group.
- How are the cognitive processes we normally associate with an individual mind implemented in a group of individuals
- How do the cognitive properties of groups differ from the cognitive properties of the people who act in those groups
- How are the cognitive properties of individual minds affected by participation in group activities?
Embodied Interaction: Cognition distributed across material resources/Artifact Mediation
The organization of a cognitive system—both in development and in operation—is an emergent property of interactions among internal and external resources.
- How do material resources (e.g. one’s body, external resources, etc.) participate as elements of an individual cognitive system?
- How do material resources participate as elements of an collective cognitive system?
- What processes emerge from the interactions among internal and external resources of an activity?
Historical Interaction: Cognition distributed across time/Community Mediation
The study of cognition is not separable from the study of culture, because agents interact in complex cultural environments that evolve over time.
- How does culture emerge out of the activity of human agents in their historical contexts, as mental, material and social structures interact?
- How does culture, i.e. a history of material artifacts and social practices, shape distributed cognitive processes?
- What cultural processes contribute to the development of knowing and action (e.g. by accumulating partial solutions to frequently encountered problems)?
