Distributed Cognition Research Articles

Machine learning and human learning: a socio-cultural and -material perspective on their relationship and the implications for researching working and learning

AbstractThe paper adopts an inter-theoretical socio-cultural and -material perspective on the relationship between human + machine learning to propose a new way to investigate the human + machine assistive assemblages emerging in professional work (e.g. medicine, architecture, design and engineering). Its starting point is Hutchins’s (1995a) concept of ‘distributed cognition’ and his argument that his concept of ‘cultural ecosystems’ constitutes a unit of analysis to investigate collective human + machine working and learning (Hutchins, Philos Psychol 27:39–49, 2013). It argues that: (i) the former offers a way to reveal the cultural constitution of and enactment of human + machine cognition and, in the process, the limitations of the computational and connectionist assumptions about learning that underpin, respectively, good old-fashioned AI and deep learning; and (2) the latter offers a way to identify, when amplified with insights from Socio-Materialism and Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, how ML is further rearranging and reorganising the distributed basis of cognition in assistive assemblages. The paper concludes by outlining a set of conjectures researchers that could use to guide their investigations into the ongoing design and deployment of HL + ML assemblages and challenges associated with the interaction between HL + ML.

Protest Crowds through the Lens of Distributed Cognition

Abstract: How are ideas transformed into collective causes that can rally and sustain protest crowds? We present a theoretical framework of crowd mobilization through the perspective of distributed cognition. We look at protest crowds as distributed processes that happen across brains, bodies, social interactions, and material-technological resources. This perspective is illustrated by protest crowd dynamics as they are facilitated by social interaction, symbols, narrative forms, and physical and virtual spaces.

Open data as an anticorruption tool? Using distributed cognition to understand breakdowns in the creation of transparency data

Abstract One of the drivers for pushing for open data as a form of corruption control stems from the belief that in making government operations more transparent, it would be possible to hold public officials accountable for how public resources are spent. These large datasets would then be open to the public for scrutiny and analysis, resulting in lower levels of corruption. Though data quality has been largely studied and many advancements have been made, it has not been extensively applied to open data, with some aspects of data quality receiving more attention than others. One key aspect however—accuracy—seems to have been overlooked. This gap resulted in our inquiry: how is accurate open data produced and how might breakdowns in this process introduce opportunities for corruption? We study a government agency situated within the Brazilian Federal Government in order to understand in what ways is accuracy compromised. Adopting a distributed cognition (DCog) theoretical framework, we found that the production of open data is not a neutral activity, instead it is a distributed process performed by individuals and artifacts. This distributed cognitive process creates opportunities for data to be concealed and misrepresented. Two models mapping data production were generated, the combination of which provided an insight into how cognitive processes are distributed, how data flow, are transformed, stored, and processed, and what instances provide opportunities for data inaccuracies and misrepresentations to occur. The results obtained have the potential to aid policymakers in improving data accuracy.

Using the DiCoT framework for integrated multimodal analysis in mixed-reality training environments.

Simulation-based training (SBT) programs are commonly employed by organizations to train individuals and teams for effective workplace cognitive and psychomotor skills in a broad range of applications. Distributed cognition has become a popular cognitive framework for the design and evaluation of these SBT environments, with structured methodologies such as Distributed Cognition for Teamwork (DiCoT) used for analysis. However, the analysis and evaluations generated by such distributed cognition frameworks require extensive domain-knowledge and manual coding and interpretation, and the analysis is primarily qualitative. In this work, we propose and develop the application of multimodal learning analysis techniques to SBT scenarios. Using these analysis methods, we can use the rich multimodal data collected in SBT environments to generate more automated interpretations of trainee performance that supplement and extend traditional DiCoT analysis. To demonstrate the use of these methods, we present a case study of nurses training in a mixed-reality manikin-based (MRMB) training environment. We show how the combined analysis of the video, speech, and eye-tracking data collected as the nurses train in the MRMB environment supports and enhances traditional qualitative DiCoT analysis. By applying such quantitative data-driven analysis methods, we can better analyze trainee activities online in SBT and MRMB environments. With continued development, these analysis methods could be used to provide targeted feedback to learners, a detailed review of training performance to the instructors, and data-driven evidence for improving the environment to simulation designers.

Shared Medical Decision Making Reconsidered: Challenging an Overly Cognitivist Perspective with a Linguistic Approach

ABSTRACT This article critically examines the four patterns of shared medical decision making (physician-dominated; physician-defined, patient-made; patient-defined, physician-made; and patient-dominated) suggested by Lippa et al. (2017). The aim of the study is to challenge these patterns with a new data set of conversations between physicians and cancer patients in a hospital ward. We recorded 13 physician–patient-conversations during the medical round in an Austrian hospital, which in total lasted about 1.5 h (language: German). We then categorized the medical decisions found in the data following Lippa et al.’s instructions and further analyzed them with a fine-grained linguistic approach. The study revealed no patient-dominated decisions and one decision, which could not be categorized with one of the patterns. Results from the linguistic approach call into question the generalizability, distinctiveness and validity of the patterns. Finally, the relationship between shared decision making and clinical distributed cognition is discussed.

Joint creative process in translation

AbstractIn this article, we explore socially distributed cognition (SDC) as a theoretical model of translation and investigate it empirically as an aspect of the collaborative and creative translation workflow. With the aim of developing a better understanding of SDC and collaborative workflows in translation, we analyzed two different settings where more than one person works on a translation: commercial specialized translation (CST) services, and the production of audio descriptions (AD) as teamwork between blind and sighted describers. The analysis focuses on how the process of co-creation unfolds in the communication that binds together the systems of SDC. While the process of co-creation was strikingly similar in the two different translation contexts, the differences were bound to channels of communication (with or without direct contact between participants), and the draft translation was identified as a central artifact that carries much of the communication when the participants do not work in the same space. With an emphasis on socially distributed cognition, our study provides a framework for both the cognitive and social aspects of translation and develops the understanding of collaborative translation processes. It also contributes to the development of translation practices by helping translation operators and trainers make choices between alternative workflows.

Distributed Cognition in Medieval and Renaissance Culture. Miranda Anderson and Michael Wheeler, eds. The Edinburgh History of Distributed Cognition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. xii + 364 pp. + color pls. £125.

Distributed Cognition in Medieval and Renaissance Culture. Miranda Anderson and Michael Wheeler, eds. The Edinburgh History of Distributed Cognition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. xii + 364 pp. + color pls. £125. - Volume 74 Issue 2

Cognition distribuée et Cours d’action

The ‘distributed cognition’ research program, initiated by Edwin Hutchins, has contributed to the development of the ‘course of action’ research program from 1987 to the present day. Edwin Hutchins having recently recognized the close relationship between his latest research, developed in terms of embodied and distributed cognition, and that on the enaction paradigm, of which this ‘course of action’ research program is a part, the question now arises of the definition of an “augmented ‘course of action’ research program”. In relation to this enaction paradigm, such a program should go into greater depth and provide a new synthesis of the ‘distributed cognition’ research program’s past contributions to the ‘course of action’ research program and integrate its new contributions. This in-depth analysis, synthesis and renewal of the contributions to the ‘course of action’ research program are facilitated by the mutual contribution and addition of different theoretical and methodological results obtained by the two research programs over recent decades. In this paper we will present our personal view of the answer to this question.

Distributed cognition: interactions between individuals and artifacts

Distributed cognition: interactions between individuals and artifacts

Augmenting autonomy: ‘New Collar’ labor and the future of tech work

This essay maps IBM’s attempts to construct a typology of high-tech ‘New Collar’ work and leverage policymaking outcomes to underwrite IBM corporate ventures capable of materializing this work. Through a discursive analysis of IBM corporate texts, webpages, and the 2017 New Collar Jobs Act, I argue for New Collar work to be understood through the lens of autonomy, as IBM recasts notions of ‘autonomous’ technology onto humans by downplaying dystopic associations of technological autonomy and transferring notions of autonomy to human workers. In doing so, I account for IBM’s use of ‘augmentation’ to situate human intelligence as the cognitive force uplifted by work performed with artificial intelligence. By pairing human augmentation with posthumanist conceptions of ‘distributed cognition’, IBM centers human intelligence through a redistributed cognition that reverses posthumanism’s decentering of human supremacy. Following from this, I unpack ‘New Collar’ as a reinvention of ‘white’ and ‘blue’ collar dichotomies and New Collar work as the grounds for tech workers to reinvent themselves. In this way, by minimizing the necessity of 4-year college degrees as pathways to economic and professional mobility, IBM constructs ‘New Collar’ with embedded notions of enlarged self-determination for applied worker intellect, vocational training, and employability. Under the aegis of creating, training, and employing New Collar workers, IBM pursues policy outcomes to underwrite corporate ventures related to New Collar work and bolster its institutional autonomy amidst marketplaces of cognitive capitalism. By outlining how tax relief provisions of the New Collar Jobs Act correlate with neoliberal ideologies of legislators and IBM investments in public–private vocational models and cybersecurity platforms, I account for IBM’s elongated ‘economy of learning’ that enables the company to more thoroughly capture, underwrite, and commodify New Collar cognition from training to market outputs.

Artificial selection for schooling behaviour and its effects on associative learning abilities.

The evolution of collective behaviour has been proposed to have important effects on individual cognitive abilities. Yet, in what way they are related remains enigmatic. In this context, the 'distributed cognition' hypothesis suggests that reliance on other group members relaxes selection for individual cognitive abilities. Here, we tested how cognitive processes respond to evolutionary changes in collective motion using replicate lines of guppies (Poecilia reticulata) artificially selected for the degree of schooling behaviour (group polarization) with >15% difference in schooling propensity. We assessed associative learning in females of these selection lines in a series of cognitive assays: colour associative learning, reversal learning, social associative learning, and individual and collective spatial associative learning. We found that control females were faster than polarization-selected females at fulfilling a learning criterion only in the colour associative learning assay, but they were also less likely to reach a learning criterion in the individual spatial associative learning assay. Hence, although testing several cognitive domains, we found weak support for the distributed cognition hypothesis. We propose that any cognitive implications of selection for collective behaviour lie outside of the cognitive abilities included in food-motivated associative learning for visual and spatial cues.

EVERYDAY MEMORY IN OLDER AND YOUNGER ADULTS: OUTSOURCING, SOCIALLY-DISTRIBUTED REMEMBERING & CONCEPTUALIZATION

Qualitative interview data about everyday remembering within the context of older adults ages 62-83, (N= 27, M=69.5, SD=5.72) and younger adults ages 18-24 (N=29, M=21.2, SD= 1.77) lives were collected and analyzed using constructivist grounded theory methods. This study sought to compare the processes used by these individuals in their pursuit of everyday memory-demanding goals and their conceptualization of these methods. Older adults typically reported importance beliefs that guided memory-supportive behaviors for things like social engagements or medical appointments, whereas younger adults reported important information as being primarily school-related. There were major differences in the execution and conceptualization for remembering critical information. Younger adults engaged in a form of socially-distributed cognition, wherein they relied on and outsourced remembering to technology and other people via apps. Interestingly, younger adults relied on others to remind them about coursework, extra-curricular activities, and social obligations via social communication platforms (e.g. GroupMe), text messages, and shared calendar alerts. Very few of the younger adults sampled were responsible for reminding others, but relied on the social altruism of their peers who were responsible for disseminating mass reminders. Conversely, technological outsourcing was not as prevalent in the older adults interviewed and only a few shared that they received similar reminders via text or email. Of the few cases that did outsource, a small subset did, however, engage in these processes within small groups or pairs, wherein a friend or significant other reminded them about social gatherings or names but in a much smaller proportion, comparatively.

Team Performance in a Simulated Maritime Control Room: The Effect of Information Integration and Operator Configuration

How team cognition is conceptualized has evolved rapidly in the last decade with the emerging use of a systems approach, moving the focus from the cognition residing in the heads of individuals, to that distributed across the team. This is referred to as ‘distributed cognition’. Increasingly, network approaches are being explored in attempts to model team distributed cognition. The specific domain of interest in the present study is the sociotechnical system within a maritime control room. This comprises human, machine and software agents interacting to interpret sensor data in order to develop a timely and accurate picture of surrounding contacts at sea. To achieve the goal, information is shared or integrated across the maritime control room consoles. The aim of this study was to develop and apply a suite of workload, situation awareness and team performance measures, including network analysis techniques, to examine how the distributed cognition of a team might change as a function of console configuration and information integration within a control room, and how these changes, if any, impact overall team performance. Sixteen teams of six novices conducted two one-hour scenarios operating generic maritime control room positions. Each team completed a one-hour simulation in each of two console configuration layouts with the order counter-balanced (within-subject design). Half the teams conducted the two scenarios in a high integration condition, and half in a low integration condition (between-subjects). The human machine interface (HMI) designs for the high integration condition emerged from a series of task analyses and user-centered design workshops. The emergent cognitively –oriented HMI designs are based on the assumption that each console can freely share information with other consoles. To create an analogue of current, less-integrated, and more stove-piped systems, a low integration condition was created where not all information was shared across consoles, but instead was shared verbally by console operators. Contacts detected at sea were introduced into the simulation and the team’s task was to assess, report and derive a solution (location, course, and speed) for each detected contact. Individual situation awareness was measured through the Situation Present Assessment Method (SPAM) and individual workload through the Air Traffic Workload Indicator Task (ATWIT). Team interaction from the scenarios were video recorded and we applied the Event Analysis of Systemic Teamwork (EAST) approach to examine the task, social and information networks which emerged. Team performance was measured as the accuracy and timeliness of the solutions We found higher information integration lowered average team workload, and improved average team situation awareness and team performance (faster solutions and a more accurate tactical picture). We found no impact of console configuration on team performance or any other dependent measure. The EAST method uncovered patterns in the network analysis that are potentially explanatory for the team workload, situation awareness and performance findings as a function of the information integration manipulation. This experiment showed that there can be reductions in workload, and improvements to situation awareness and performance when information is shared between consoles in a considered design. This has implications for HMI design within a team setting. The set of diagnostic metrics developed were largely effective in examining teamwork and team performance. Acknowledgements. The authors would like to thank Justin Hill (Royal Australian Navy) for his subject matter expertise, Graeme Muller (elmTEK) for his software, technical and infrastructure support, David Munro-Ford (Total Technology Partners) for his simulation programming, Dr Aaron Roberts for his advice on general aspects of the experiment, and Professor Paul Salmon for his advice on EAST.

Symbiotic cognition as an alternative for socially extended cognition

ABSTRACTAccording to a promising proposal, cognitive abilities and processes in the context of social institutions should be characterized as socially extended cognition. However, this idea invokes resistance because it seems to invoke metaphysical problems such as a serious variant of the problem of cognitive bloat. In this paper, I argue that defenders of socially extended cognition are not overly worried by such problems because their position is akin to a position known as ‘distributed cognition,’ which avoids these problems. Nevertheless, I will argue that the explanatory aims of socially extended cognition do not correspond to the distributed cognition perspective. The ensuing predicament can be avoided, however, by recognizing that the idea of socially extended cognition hinges on the conflation of two dimensions of the interconnection of the elements in a cognitive system, which I will label ‘functional integration’ and ‘task-dependency.’ Separating these dimensions allows us to identify an overlooked alternative for extended and distributed cognition – symbiotic cognition – that fits cognition in social institutions better than both and avoids the predicament.

Distributed Cognition: Understanding Complex Sociotechnical Informatics.

Distributed cognition theory posits that our cognitive tasks are so tightly coupled to the environment that cognition extends into the environment, beyond the skin and the skull. It uses cognitive concepts to describe information processing across external representations, social networks and across different periods of time. Distributed cognition lends itself to exploring how people interact with technology in the workplace, issues to do with communication and coordination, how people's thinking extends into the environment and sociotechnical system architecture and performance more broadly. We provide an overview of early work that established distributed cognition theory, describe more recent work that facilitates its application, and outline how this theory has been used in health informatics. We present two use cases to show how distributed cognition can be used at the formative and summative stages of a project life cycle. In both cases, key determinants that influence performance of the sociotechnical system and/or the technology are identified. We argue that distributed cognition theory can have descriptive, rhetorical, inferential and application power. For evidence-based health informatics it can lead to design changes and hypotheses that can be tested.

Collective Mindfulness and Processes of Sensemaking in Health IT Implementation.

High reliability organisations operate safely in situations of high risk by organising for collective mindfulness. They do so through five ongoing processes geared towards anticipating, containing, and making sense of the unexpected. The five processes are: preoccupation with failure, reluctance to simplify interpretations, sensitivity to operations, commitment to resilience, and deference to expertise. The theory of collective mindfulness builds on Hutchins's theory of distributed cognition (the 'collective mind' of ship navigation teams) and on Langer's theory of mindfulness about individuals' interpreting information in context. However, in the theory of collective mindfulness, attention is paid not to individual cognition or decision making, but to collective processes of sensemaking emerging from individuals' interactions in dealing with an equivocal environment. In health informatics, the theory of collective mindfulness can be used to explain health information technology (IT) development and implementation, across its life cycle, and inform guidance towards mindful management of IT projects. For example, applied to a case of electronic health record implementation in a hospital context, the theory explains how mindful management of the sense-making challenges of post-roll out adaptation processes contributes to a 'successful' IT project. Further, the theory challenges a static and linear understanding of success (or failure) of health IT initiatives, supporting instead an argument for outcomes - be it reliability and safety, or IT project success - as collective, complex and dynamic achievements of mindful organising practices.

Farzad Sharifian, (Ed.) The Routledge Handbook of language and culture. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015. Pp. xv-522. ISBN: 978-0-415-52701-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-79399-3 (ebk)7

Farzad Sharifian, (Ed.) The Routledge Handbook of language and culture. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015. Pp. xv-522. ISBN: 978-0-415-52701-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-79399-3 (ebk)7

Ecologies of Experience: John Dewey, Distributed Cognition, and the Cultural-Cognitive Ecosystem of Theatre-Training Settings

Ecologies of ExperienceJohn Dewey, Distributed Cognition, and the Cultural-Cognitive Ecosystem of Theatre-Training Settings Cohen Ambrose (bio) In the final remarks of one of his last writings on education, delivered for the 1938 Kappa Delta Pi Lecture Series, philosopher and psychologist John Dewey argued that personal experience ought to be the ultimate goal and means of education: "Education in order to accomplish its ends both for the individual learner and for society, must be based upon experience—which is always the actual life-experience of some individual. … It is for this reason alone that I have emphasized the need for a sound philosophy of experience."1 As an early-career faculty member and coordinator of a small theatre program at a teaching-and student-centered college, I was drawn to Dewey's assertion that the driving force of education is to create experiences that lead to more educative experiences. I was curious, then: since collaboration; studio training; theoretical, literary, and historical examination; and preparation all tend to culminate in the highly experiential process of production in most theatre-training settings, are we not perfectly positioned to attempt to articulate such a philosophy of experience? Since theatre training is also a deeply embodied experience, I argue for a philosophy that focuses its attention on the bodies of the teachers and learners at its core. In this essay, I focus primarily on hypothesizing a scientific and philosophical basis for the conception of experience in order to inform future detailed and concrete outlines of educative experiences in the theatre-training setting. Dewey argues, "The more definitely and sincerely it is held that education is a development within, by, and for experience, the more important it is that there shall be clear conceptions of what experience is."2 I suggest that current hypotheses of situated cognition—namely extended mind, as proposed by Andy Clark and David Chalmers,3 [End Page 80] embodied cognition, and, primarily, distributed cognition—are in and of themselves examples of "what experience is." I also articulate some concrete examples of what the centrality of the bodies of the learners and teachers in a given training ecology might look like at curricular, institutional, and classroom and studio levels. These modes of considering a learner's brain-to-body-to-world engagement culminate in a metaphorical conception of the sociocultural and physical design of any human environment, including the theatre-training setting, that Edwin Hutchins calls a "cognitive ecosystem," or "cognitive ecology."4 For John Sutton and Evelyn Tribble, cognitive ecologies are "multi-dimensional contexts in which we remember, feel, think, sense, communicate, imagine, and act, often collaboratively, on the fly, and in rich, ongoing interaction with our environments."5 The science community's relatively recent acknowledgment of cognitive ecosystems makes the literal and metaphoric ways of understanding the possibilities of change in theatre-training settings particularly ripe for exploration. Hutchins beckons: "As an object of study, this cognitive ecosystem falls into the cracks among the academic disciplines as they are currently organized. Because no field or discipline has yet taken ownership of cultural-cognitive ecosystems, little is known about their function."6 Answering Hutchins's call, I suggest that theatre practitioners serving as teachers and leaders in institutions of higher education take ownership of cultural-cognitive ecosystems to help us form a theoretical and practice-based philosophy of embodied experience in the theatre-training setting. The Conditions for Experience in the Theatre-Training Setting In fairly clear terms, Dewey articulates what does and does not constitute an educative experience. Put simply, he argues that any experience that leads to new experiences is educative because it plants a seed for another experience. Whether the embodied experiences within the cognitive ecosystem themselves—an acting class, a run crew position, or an audition, for example—are negative or positive, if they do not cohere and lead to the germination and growth of further, generative experiences, they end up standing alone as mere isolated events that do not fit into a whole. Dewey warns that "each experience may be lively, vivid, and 'interesting', and yet their disconnectedness may artificially generate dispersive, disintegrated, centrifugal habits."7 No matter how positive a given learning...

Book Review: Automobile Automation: Distributed Cognition on the Road

Book Review: Automobile Automation: Distributed Cognition on the Road

Kreative Montage – distributed cognition bei Svilova und Vertov

Die Cutterin Elizaveta Svilova (1900 - 1975), Ehefrau und Zeit ihres Lebens enge Mitarbeiterin des Filmemachers Dziga Vertov (1896-1954), nimmt in der wissenschaftlichen Erforschung der Filme ihres beruhmten Ehemanns nur eine Randposition ein, und bleibt damit wie viele weitere Fraue n und Cutter*innen in der Filmgeschichte marginal. Der Artikel befasst sich mit dieser filmhistorischen Leerstelle. Er kombiniert Methoden aus der Filmgeschichte, der kognitiven Philosophie und der kunstlerischen Praxis bei der Erforschung von Svilovas Zusammenarbeit mit Vertov. Ziel unseres Artikels ist es, Svilovas kreativen Beitrag am Filmwerk zu erheben, das traditionellerweise Vertovs Genie zugeschrieben wird, indem Montageprozesse als Zusammenarbeit von Expert*innen in einem kognitiven Syste m definiert werden. Die Analyse einer ausgewahlten Aufnahme von Svilova bei ihrer Arbeit offenbart, dass Montage eine korperliche Expertise ist (embodied form of expertise). Dies dient als empirische Evidenz eines neuen Modells von filmischer Kreativitat, das in den Werken und Dokumenten der gemeinsamen Arbeit Svilovas und Vertovs auf einzigartige Weise sichtbar wird. Das Verstandnis von Montage als eine Instanz von verteilter Kognition gewahrt zudem Einblicke in dieses Handwerk und hebt dessen kreativen Beitrag im Schaffensprozess eines Films hervor. Dabei kommen wir zu dem Schluss, dass dieses Verstandnis tiefgreifende Auswirkungen auf die Neubewertung der Werke von bislang unsichtbaren Frauen und Cutter*innen haben wird.