Chances, affordances, and cognitive niche construction: the plasticity of environmental situatedness

Abstract

As a matter of fact, humans continuously delegate and distribute cognitive functions to the environment to lessen their limits. They build models, representations, and other various mediating structures, that are considered to aid thought. In doing these, humans are engaged in a process of cognitive niche construction. In this sense, we argue that a cognitive niche emerges from a network of continuous interplays between individuals and the environment, in which people alter and modify the environment by mimetically externalising fleeting thoughts, private ideas, etc., into external supports. Through mimetic activities humans create external semiotic anchors that become cognitive chances.