Distributed Cognition Perspective Research Articles

Is situation awareness all in the mind?

This paper addresses the fundamental discipline theoretic question of whether situation awareness is a phenomenon best described by psychology, engineering or systems ergonomics. Each of these disciplines places a different emphasis on the notion of what situation awareness is and how it manifests itself. The approach from psychology places situation awareness as something that can only exist in the minds of people in a system. This means that the unit of analysis is the individual and that team situation awareness is the summation of individual situation awareness. The engineering perspective puts situation awareness in the world, represented in the artefacts and objects that people use. This means that the unit of analysis is the things that people interact with. Finally, the systems ergonomics perspective places emphasis on the interaction between people and their artefacts in the world, to propose that situation awareness functions like distributed cognition. This means that the unit of analysis is the whole socio-technical system. Each of these perspectives is presented and compared with reference to studies in aviation and other domains. It is concluded that the distributed cognition perspective of situation awareness offers the most comprehensive explanation of the phenomena observed in socio-technical systems. Socio-technical systems theory allows exploration of the social and technical sub-systems independently, which offers a theoretical framework for aligning the three views of situation awareness.

Harnessing distributed musical expertise through edublogging

<span>The pedagogical potential of edublogging - blogging used as an educational tool and strategy - in music teaching has been explored in two previous studies; a third exploration has now been conducted. Recognising the social and contextual dimensions of knowledge and of the learning process, I reflect on all three experiences from a distributed cognition perspective, as opposed to a traditional cognitivist one. First, the edublogging scenario in each case will be seen through the lens of distributed cognition in respect of the nature of its learning community and culture. Then, these instructional endeavours are evaluated against the distributed cognition ideals. The pedagogy discussed here leverages the potential of edublogging to draw on distributed musical expertise. Apart from being in line with the current trend in learning theories towards emphasising distributed cognition and community based learning, such a pedagogical strategy in part also offers a viable solution to the challenge of addressing an increasingly expanding curriculum, whether in music or other subjects, due to knowledge explosion and the pressures of globalisation.</span>

A Distributed Cognition Perspective on Newcomers' Change Processes: The Management of Cognitive Uncertainty in Two Investment Banks

This paper examines newcomers' cognitive change processes in two investment banks during their socialization. A two-year ethnographic study examines how the two banks managed the duration of junior bankers' cognitive uncertainty differently, which resulted in distinct forms of individual cognitive change and cognition at the organizational level. Red Bank reduced cognitive uncertainty such that bankers experienced it as transient. It conveyed abstract concepts so that bankers could solve problems independently using deduction. This created an individual-centric organizational cognition. To highlight situational uniqueness, Amp Bank amplified cognitive uncertainty such that bankers experienced it as persistent. This created a collective-centric organizational cognition: because demands exceeded individuals' cognitive capacity, bankers used organizational resources to solve problems inductively. A grounded theory depicts the mutual constitution of individual and organizational cognition, including the relation of these levels over time and how the same individual cognitive process operates differently in a different organizational cognitive context. It uses a distributed cognition framework to contribute to theory development on how cognition becomes diversified and specialized in organizations.

Rethinking Health Numeracy: A Multidisciplinary Literature Review

The purpose of this review is to organize various published conceptions of health numeracy and to discuss how health numeracy contributes to the productive use of quantitative information for health. We define health numeracy as the individual-level skills needed to understand and use quantitative health information, including basic computation skills, ability to use information in documents and non-text formats such as graphs, and ability to communicate orally. We also identify two other factors affecting whether a consumer can use quantitative health information: design of documents and other information artifacts, and health-care providers’ communication skills. We draw upon the distributed cognition perspective to argue that essential ingredients for the productive use of quantitative health information include not only health numeracy but also good provider communication skills, as well as documents and devices that are designed to enhance comprehension and cognition.