Cognitive Labor Research Articles

Can the Multitude Save the Left?

The multitude, the hero of Hardt and Negri's 2000 book Empire, remained cloaked in shadows. The purpose of that book was rather to illuminate the multitude's enemy: Empire. Empire is the new sovereign power that governs the world. Empire comprises the concrete institutions and structures that regulate the global polity and economy: the United Nations, the U.S. military, NATO, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, etc. Empire also creates the languages, ideologies, and opinions that propagate the imperial order: e.g., that free markets generate free societies, that globalization movements have affinities to Al-Quaeda, that communism is entirely discredited. What makes Empire different and more sinister than earlier forms of capitalism and imperialism, according to Hardt and Negri, is the extent of its rule. Empire encompasses the entire world, presents itself as the culmination of history, and produces the very bodies that it governs. Empire, cinemagraphically, is The Matrix: a global parasite that extracts the energy and labor of a subjugated humanity. 1. In Empire, Hardt and Negri elaborate several features of the multitude that may combat this new global order. The multitude is the postmodern proletariat. It includes everyone exploited by capitalism, including the poor who vitalize society but are dismissed by orthodox Marxism. The multitude produces ideas, songs, books, and software, in addition to cars, tanks, and factories. It is nomadic, circulating the globe in ever-accelerating flows, and miscegenated, hybridizing identities and cultures. The multitude, performing cognitive, symbolic, and affective labor, is not the industrial working class, and its internal diversity and intelligence distinguish it from the people, the masses, and the mob. The multitude is a political subjectivity generating, and generated by, our time. Most importantly, for Hardt and Negri, the multitude desires freedom. The multitude seeks to possess citizenship anywhere in the world, to earn a social wage, and to control collectively the means of production. 2.

Transactive Memory Systems in Organizations: Matching Tasks, Expertise, and People

Transactive memory is the shared division of cognitive labor with respect to the encoding, storage, retrieval, and communication of information from different knowledge domains, which often develops in groups and can lead to greater efficiency and effectiveness. Although discussions of transactive memory theory suggest that components of the theory are dynamic, research tends to treat transactive memory as evolving linearly, using static measures rather than assessing development over time. In response, we offer a model emphasizing both linear and cyclical aspects of transactive memory development in work groups, and we propose that task is a major influence on developmental processes. We introduce task representation and the task-expertise-person (TEP) unit as basic constructs involved in transactive memory development, and we provide a dynamic model of how TEP units are constructed, evaluated, and utilized. Regarding observable changes over time, we propose that transactive memory systems can vary in terms of accuracy (the degree to which group members' perceptions about others' task-related expertise are accurate), sharedness (the degree to which members have a shared representation of the transactive memory system), and validation (the degree to which group members participate in the transactive memory system). Convergence is the optimal state of transactive memory systems and reflects high levels of accuracy, sharedness, and validation.

Transactive Memory Systems in Organizations

Transactive memory is the shared division of cognitive labor with respect to the encoding, storage, retrieval, and communication of information from different knowledge domains, which often develop...

WHO SAYS YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU? TRANSFERRING TRANSACTIVE MEMORY SYSTEMS ACROSS TASKS.

The article tests the generalizability of transactive memory system (TMS) effects by examining the extent to which benefits from a TMS developed on one task transfer to other tasks performed by the same team. One barrier to knowledge transfer is that individuals fail to recognize the functional similarities between tasks. In addition to helping members learn more about a task and recognize task similarities, a TMS may help define a structure for remembering and coordinating members' knowledge. This structure is defined by a team's division of cognitive labor and the interaction routines that flow from it. This study makes an important contribution to the literature by challenging the assumption that group transactive memory systems are task specific. Support was demonstrated for a conceptualization of a TMS as a learning system that develops individual- and team-level knowledge that can be transferred across tasks. Furthermore, the results suggest that TMS may be embedded in the team members and team structure more than in the task. The impact of knowledge embedded in team structure appears to be especially strong, suggesting that a stable structure may help preserve a TMS even if team membership changes.

Bridging contested terrain: linking incentive-based and learning perspectives on organizational evolution

In this paper we present a general model of organizational problem-solving in which we explore the relationship between problem complexity, decentralization of tasks and reward schemes. When facing complex problems that require the co-ordination of large numbers of interdependent elements, organizations face a decomposition problem that has both cognitive dimensions and reward and incentive dimensions. The former relate to the decomposition and allocation of the process of generation of new solutions: since the search space is too vast to be searched extensively, organizations employ heuristics for reducing it. The decomposition heuristic takes the form of division of cognitive labour and determines which solutions are generated and become candidates for selection. The reward and incentive dimensions fundamentally shape the selection environment which chooses over alternative solutions. The model we present begins to study the interrelationships between these two domains of analysis: in particular, we compare the problem-solving performance of organizations characterized by various decompositions (of coarser or finer grain) and various reward schemes (at the level of the entire organization, team and individual). Moreover we investigate extensions of our model in order to account for (admittedly rudimentary) power and authority relationships (giving some parts of the organization the power to stop changes in other parts), and discuss the interaction of problem representations and incentive mechanisms. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

Early understanding of the division of cognitive labor.

Two studies with 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds (N = 104) examined whether young children can differentiate expertise in the minds of others. Study 1 revealed that all children in the sample could correctly attribute observable knowledge to familiar experts (i.e., a doctor and a car mechanic). Further, 4- and 5-year-olds could correctly attribute knowledge of underlying scientific principles to the appropriate experts. In contrast, Study 2 demonstrated that 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds have difficulty making attributions of knowledge of scientific principles to unfamiliar experts. A computational analysis in Study 3 indicated that 4- and 5-year-olds' successes on the first two studies could not be attributed to the way in which words co-occur in discourse. Overall, these studies showed that young children have a sense of the division of cognitive labor, albeit fragile.

A comparative simulation study of work processes in autonomous production cells

AbstractAn approach to human‐centered design and assessment of work processes in flexible manufacturing systems with the help of dynamic task networks is presented. To model and simulate the task networks, the method of timed colored Petri Nets is used. Two task networks are developed. The first task network is a model of work processes in Autonomous Production Cells (APCs). The second task network represents work processes in conventional Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC)‐based manufacturing systems. The material processing technology is associated with 5‐axis milling. The values of attributes of task elements were acquired empirically on a fine‐grained level with reference to a sample milling order. Comparative hypotheses regarding time‐on‐task, supervisory control functions, levels of cognitive control, human error (HE), and labor division were then formulated. To test these hypotheses, several simulation experiments were conducted. The results from inferential statistics show that single‐operator APCs have a 30% higher efficiency in relation to total time‐on‐task. Moreover, the level of cognitive control is significantly shifted toward rule‐ and knowledge‐based behavior. Surprisingly, the simulation of minor HE does not demonstrate a significantly worse performance from APCs. A simulated labor division among central process planner and production operator allows an additional efficiency improvement of approximately 15%. However, the labor division has two important drawbacks: first, a sequential incompleteness of operators' task spectrum occurs; second, the operator has to cope with hierarchical task incompleteness. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was carried out to investigate the effects of varying lot sizes and number of processed orders. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Ecological Cognition and Cognitive Ecology

The Ecological Cognition perspective emphasizes the fact that human cognition is adaptive to the constraints of the context of task performance. People are good at developing strategies for task performance that take advantage of the informational affordances of the task environment. Therefore, if we wish to understand human cognition, we must look beyond the skin and skull of the individual to the material and social structures with which the mind interacts. Of course, material artifacts and social arrangements are elements of adaptive processes as well. Material artifacts are often crystallizations of regularities in the task environment and they develop over time, changing adaptively to fit the constraints of the task, the properties of the task performers, and the other artifacts employed in the task performance. Such changes in the material artifacts change the informational affordances of the task environment, which creates new opportunities for the development of strategies. Thus, human cognition and the material supports of human cognition must be seen as a co-adaptive system. Similarly, in complex work settings where two or more persons jointly perform tasks, social arrangements are enacted anew each time a socially distributed task is performed. Strategies for the social division of cognitive labor are also part of this co-adaptive system, both constraining and being constrained by mental and material artifacts. These interlocked co-adaptive systems suggest a cognitive ecology. It's a compelling way of talking about such systems. Can it be more than a metaphor?

Perceptions of Expertise and Transactive Memory in Work Relationships

People involved in close interpersonal relationships often develop a transactive memory system - a division of cognitive labor with respect to the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information from different substantive domains. The present study examined transactive memory systems using a sample of clerical office workers in a laboratory setting. It tested the general hypothesis that individual learning in work relationships is affected by perceptions of the relative expertise of coworkers. Participants were told that they would work on a task with a partner who had either similar or different work-related knowledge and job responsibilities. The findings supported the hypotheses that (a) people learn and recall more information in their own areas of expertise when their partner has different rather than similar work-related expertise; and (b) this effect reverses for recall of information outside work-related expertise. Taken together, the data showed that transactive memory is a property of work relationships, not just romantic relationships, and that role-based expertise can serve as its basis.

Epistemología social y consenso en la ciencia

Epistemología social y consenso en la ciencia

Networking and division of labour – The case of industrial districts in the North–East of Italy*

Networking can be considered the organizational support to the learning process. The paper defines a new coordination process of the division of labour between autonomous actors and organizations, beyond the market and the hierarchical processes. Networking by means of “interactive communication” is becoming increasingly the typical organizational process in post-fordism which allows new, far-reaching, opportunities in the division of cognitive labour. The discussion of the process of exploration and exploitation of knowledge is based on two analytical dimensions: (a) the types of knowledge shared by organizations and (b) the types of roles played by different actor networks. The analytical framework shows how different specialized actors and organizations, with different tasks, are complementary as regards the effectiveness of the networking (specialists, systemists, connectors and meta-organizers). The empirical evidence – concerning the evolution of the industrial districts of the North–East of Italy towards the network form – seems to support the conceptual approach adopted.

Brainmap modeling of prefrontal cognitive dysfunction in negative symptom schizophrenia

Complex cognitive processes, including language, rely on multiple mental operations that are carried out by several large-scale functional networks in the frontal, temporal, and parietal association cortices of the human brain. The central division of cognitive labor is between two fronto-parietal bilateral networks: (a) the multiple demand (MD) network, which supports executive processes, such as working memory and cognitive control, and is engaged by diverse task domains, including language, especially when comprehension gets difficult; and (b) the default mode network (DMN), which supports introspective processes, such as mind wandering, and is active when we are not engaged in processing external stimuli. These two networks are strongly dissociated in both their functional profiles and their patterns of activity fluctuations during naturalistic cognition. Here, we focus on the functional relationship between these two networks and a third network: (c) the fronto-temporal left-lateralized “core” language network, which is selectively recruited by linguistic processing. Is the language network distinct and dissociated from both the MD network and the DMN, or is it synchronized and integrated with one or both of them? Recent work has provided evidence for a dissociation between the language network and the MD network. However, the relationship between the language network and the DMN is less clear, with some evidence for coordinated activity patterns and similar response profiles, perhaps due to the role of both in semantic processing. Here we use a novel fMRI approach to examine the relationship among the three networks: we measure the strength of activations in different language, MD, and DMN regions to functional contrasts typically used to identify each network, and then test which regions co-vary in their contrast effect sizes across 60 individuals. We find that effect sizes correlate strongly within each network (e.g., one language region and another language region, or one DMN region and another DMN region), but show little or no correlation for region pairs across networks (e.g., a language region and a DMN region). Thus, using our novel method, we replicate the language/MD network dissociation discovered previously with other approaches, and also show that the language network is robustly dissociated from the DMN, overall suggesting that these three networks contribute to high-level cognition in different ways and, perhaps, support distinct computations. Inter-individual differences in effect sizes therefore do not simply reflect general differences in vascularization or attention, but exhibit sensitivity to the functional architecture of the brain. The strength of activation in each network can thus be probed separately in studies that attempt to link neural variability to behavioral or genetic variability.

Psychology and information technology: The study of cognition in organizations

This paper reviews a range of psychological research into the development and use of information technology (IT) at work. The overall purpose is to use this field of inquiry to argue the need to study cognition in organizations. The paper includes reviews of the literatures on human–computer interaction, the wider organizational aspects of IT, metaphors in use within organizational psychology, empirical studies of the development and use of IT, and some emerging work on situated action and distributed cognition.The paper ends with an outline of some topics that should be included in the study of cognition in organizations, describing some ideas on the interdependencies between organizational and cognitive issues, a worldview to guide this research, and a framework based on the division of cognitive labour.

Methodological conservatism and social epistemology

Abstract This paper defends two principles of methodological conservatism on the grounds that they help to promote an effective social structure for a knowledge‐seeking community. Conservatism has some prima facie justification because it provides for an effective division of cognitive labor, it promotes the effective use of scientific resources, and it provides for a certain amount of stability. However, the principles I defend in this paper should not be treated as absolute or unconditional criteria of theory‐choice, since they can be overridden by other rules or maxims. Since the decision to override a principle of conservatism depends on various contextual factors, the appropriateness of conservatism can vary from context to context.

Organizing Work by Adaptation

Common sense suggests that work is organized in accordance with plans that are created by designers who reflect on the work setting and manipulate representations of the work process in order to determine new and efficient organizational structures. Or, even if “outside” designers are not involved, the reorganization of work is normally attributed to the conscious reflection by members of the work group itself. A detailed examination of the response of a real-world group to a sudden and unexpected change in its informational environment shows that these common sense assumptions may be quite misleading. While entering a harbor, a large ship suffered an engineering breakdown that disabled an important piece of navigational equipment. This paper considers the response of the ship's navigation team to the changed task demands imposed by the loss of this equipment. Following a rather chaotic search of the space of computational and social organizational alternatives, the team arrived at a new stable work configuration. In retrospect, this solution appears to be just the sort of solution we would hope designers could produce However, while some aspects of the response appear to be the products of conscious reflection, others, particularly those concerning the division of cognitive labor, are shown to arise without reflection from adaptations by individuals to what appear to them as local task demands. It is argued that while the participants may have represented and thus learned the solution after it came into being, the solution was clearly discovered by the organization itself before it was discovered by any of the participants.

The Division of Cognitive Labor

The Division of Cognitive Labor

Public versus private schools in developing countries: Evidence from Colombia and Tanzania

The paper presents evidence on differences between public and private schools in Colombia and Tanzania on a number of indicators like cognitive achievement, unit cost and labor market outcomes. The findings are mixed, in the sense that in both countries, statistically controlling for student ability and socioeconomic background, private school students outperform their public school counterparts on academic achievement, whereas the reverse is true regarding achievement on specialized subject-matter. One possible explanation of this finding is that parental pressure (social demand) on private schools makes them tacitly emphasize academic subjects which are viewed by their customers as leading to a higher level of opportunities after graduation.

Education, Income, and Ability

Current estimates of the contribution of education to economic growth have been questioned because they ignore the interaction of education with ability. Whether the neglect of ability differences in the analyses of the income-education relationship results in estimates that are too high was considered in an earlier paper by one of the authors (Griliches 1970), and a negative answer was conjectured. In this paper, we pursue this question a bit further, using a new and larger body of data. Unfortunately, a definitive answer to this question is hampered both by the vagueness and elasticity of "education" and "ability" as analytical concepts and by the lack of data on early (preschooling) intelligence. The data examined in this paper are based on a 1964 sample of U.S. military veterans. The variables measured include scores on a mental ability test, indicators of parental status, region of residence while growing up, school years completed before service, and school years completed during or after service. These have allowed us to inquire into the separate effects of parental background, intelligence, and schooling. The basic problem and analytical framework can be set out very simply. Let income be a linear function of education and ability, or, Y a + P1E + P(2G + u, where Y is income, E is education, G is ability,