Mapping systemic resources in problem solving

Abstract

In the wild, thinking demonstrably uses interactive processes that draw on a wide range of external resources, spanning multiple time scales. As Malafouris (2015, p. 361) puts it, “cognition is not a within property; it is an in-between process”. Interactive processes configure extended systems within which each human agent is embedded. Yet much research on higher cognition, such as problem solving, reflects an implicit but deep commitment to methodological individualism that casts the agent as the ontological locus of cognition, and largely dictates the nature of the research enterprise. Thus, tasks to measure capacities and gauge reasoning performance are designed in a manner that reduces or eliminates the possibility of interacting with the problem presentation; if thinking takes place in the head, there is no need or reason to engineer procedures wherein agents can interact with the task's physical constituents. Conversely, a methodological interactivism forces one to acknowledge the participative yet not all-encompassing role of capacities such as working memory and thinking dispositions; it also encourages the granular mapping of the cognitive ecosystem from which new ideas emerge. To adopt an interactivist perspective is thus to focus on the cognitive resources of the extended system inviting a careful description of how these resources are dynamically configured over time and space to promote the development of new ideas in problem solving. In turn, a systemic perspective encourages the development of interventions that promote cognitive performance through the optimisation of systemic rather than individualist cognitive resources.