Distributed Cognition Research Articles

The Problem of Agency in Scientific Distributed Cognitive Systems

AbstractFrom the perspective of cognitive science, it is illuminating to think of much contemporary scientific research as taking place in distributed cognitive systems. This is particularly true of large-scale experimental and observational systems such as the Hubble Telescope. Clark, Hutchins, Knorr-Cetina, and Latour insist or imply such a move requires expanding our notions of knowledge, mind, and even consciousness. Whether this is correct seems to me not a straightforward factual question. Rather, the issue seems to be how best to develop a theoretical understanding of such systems appropriate to the study of science and technology. I argue that there is no need to attribute to such systems as a whole any form of cognitive agency. We can well understand the importance of such systems while restricting agency to the human components. The implication is that we think of these large-scale distributed cognitive systems not so much as unified wholes, but as hybrid systems including both physical artifacts and ordinary humans.

Crossing the digital divide safely and trustingly: how ecologies of learning scaffold the journey

The article addresses the issue of learning to elearn in borderless programs in a globalised learning landscape and the associated problems of scaffolding the journey across the digital divide. The authors argue that the assumption underlying such courses is that cross-cultural programs are viable because they are conceived and designed to be ‘global’, and that they assume this design to be inclusive. Henning and Van der Westhuizen claim that the global discourse in most domains can take only marginal note of the need to infuse such programs with a local semiotic—a course design criterion for which they argue. They furthermore forward the notion that the majority of the world's prospective elearners need various bridging mechanisms in order to be able to access the broader discourse and that one of these mechanisms can be explored through the metaphor of “information ecologies” as proposed by Nardi and O'Day [Nardi, B.A., & O'Day, V.L. (1999). Information ecologies. Using technology with heart. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press]. They also conclude that issues of the learners’ trust in the course and its system need to be considered when contemplating programs for diverse target groups. By way of a case study, consisting of three portraitures of adult learners, they explore the limitations of assumed distributed cognition and claim that learning is, in reality, contained/constrained in the familiar local narrative of the novice adult elearners in a rural South African context. The case study illustrates how the resistance to technology and its power base becomes an obstacle for the students and how the support of peers becomes the main scaffolding mechanism for their entry into electronic learning environments. The findings thus show how the social context becomes the facilitator and the scaffold for elearning, more than technology and the curriculum itself.

The role of computation in scientific cognition

This paper is a contribution to that part of science studies known as ‘the cognitive study of science’. The general goal of such studies is to understand cognition as it occurs in modern science. Attention is restricted to higher energy physics (HEP) practiced at a research laboratory such as the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN). The dominant paradigm in cognitive science would have us understand the acquisition of knowledge regarding elementary particles in terms of a cognitive agent that performs computations on a symbolic representation. In the case of HEP, however, it is difficult to identify a cognitive agent or the required symbolic representations and algorithms. The notion of ‘collective cognition’ provides a step in the right direction, but does not go far enough. I argue that we need to invoke a more radical notion of ‘distributed cognition’ that explicitly includes artefacts. However, the inclusion of artefacts in scientific cognitive systems makes application of the cognition as computation paradigm even more problematic. I conclude that scientific cognitive systems are hybrid systems including both computational and dynamical artefacts as well as human agents. Scientific knowledge itself is best regarded as the impersonal product of a whole scientific community.

Semantic Information Fusion for Coordinated Signal Processing in Mobile Sensor Networks

Distributed cognition of dynamic processes is commonly observed in mobile groups of animates like schools of fish, hunting lions, or in human teams for sports or military maneuvers. This paper presents methods for dynamic distributed cognition using an ad hoc mobile network of microsensors to detect, identify and track targets in noisy environments. We develop off-line algorithms for aggregating the most appropriate knowledge abstractions into semantic information, which is then used for on-line fusion of relevant attributes observed by local clusters in the sensor network. Local analysis of time series of sensor data yields aggregated semantic information, which is exchanged across nodes for higher level distributed cognition. This eliminates the need for exchanging high volumes of signal data and, thus reduces bandwidth and energy requirements for battery powered microsensors.

Learning to Do Knowledge Work in Systems of Distributed Cognition

Within work sites that engage in knowledge work, newcomers have particular difficulty acquiring knowledge because knowledge keeps changing. Newcomers have to assimilate currently accepted knowledge while remaining open to learning and even generating new knowledge. Such acquisition and generation of communal knowledge are examples of distributed cognition. In workplaces engaging in knowledge work (where knowledge is the primary product), distributed cognition aims at a less stable goal than the one that Hutchins describes for ship navigation. A study of six summer interns in an engineering development center shows that, for them and their more experienced colleagues, learning did not precede activity but rather was the means by which they remained attuned to activity and able to function. Cognition was distributed not only among people but also among people and their tools. Communication tools were particularly important because communication was the means by which the system functioned as a unified whole.

Analyzing Human-Computer Interaction as Distributed Cognition: The Resources Model

In this article we present a new approach to interaction modeling based on the concept of information resources. The approach is inspired by recent distributed cognition (DC) literature but develops a model that applies specifically to human-computer interaction (HCI) modeling. Of course, there are many approaches to modeling HCI, and the motivation of this article is not to offer yet another approach. Rather, our motivation is that the recent developments in DC are so obviously relevant to HCI modeling and design, yet the ideas have lacked visibility in the HCI community. By providing a model whose concepts are rooted in DC concepts, we hope to achieve this visibility. DC research identifies resources for action as central to the interaction between people and technologies, but it stops short of providing a definition of such resources at a level that could be used to analyze interaction. The resources model described in this article defines a limited number of resource types as abstract information structures that can be used to analyze interaction. We demonstrate how these abstract types can be represented differently in an interface. The resources model uses the concept of interaction strategy to describe the way in which different configurations of resources can differently shape users' actions. These 2 components of the resources model (information structures and interaction strategies), through the process of coordination and integration, provide a link among devices, representations, and actions that is not well articulated in the DC literature.

The Holy Spirit as Conscience Collective

Catholic Charismatics often talk about “God,” “Jesus,” “the Holy Spirit,” or simply “the Lord” as an active partner in interaction. Most sociologists regard such statements as outside the epistemological purview of an empirical discipline; God is relegated to the inaccessible domain of the “specifically religious.” In this paper I suggest that “the Holy Spirit” is a manifestation of a learnable pattern of social interaction that may generate a superindividual dialogic unity, what Durkheim called a conscience collective, or what has more recently been called shared or distributed cognition. The internalization of this intersubjective process then becomes the basis for the intrasubjective experience of dialogue with the divine.

The still - neglected situation?

Summary: Current research on cooperation at work feeds on conceptual and theoretical innovations which have appeared in the study of cognitive social activities. This article attempts to gauge such innovations. It focuses in particular on the problematics of 'situated action', 'distributed cognition' and operability of objects, of which it emphasizes both the interest and the difficulties. It shows that the rediscovery of the environment and context does not mean that the situation is no longer neglected.

分散認知

分散認知

Computer-mediated distributed cognitions

Computer-mediated distributed cognitions

Designing Information Technology to Support Distributed Cognition

Cognition in organizations is a distributed phenomenon, in which individual members of an organization reflect upon their experience, make plans, or take action. Organizational learning or organizational cognition are familiar terms, but it is only the individual persons in an organization who create interpretations and test understandings, as they think and learn in their organizational setting. Coordinated outcomes emerge in organizations when individuals think and act in ways that take others in the organization and their interdependencies into account. We argue that much of the effort to design information technology to support cognition in organizations has not addressed its distributed quality. Such systems have tended to focus either on the individual as an isolated decision maker, or on the group as a producer of a decision or policy statement in common. In distributed cognition, by contrast, the group is a set of autonomous agents who act independently yet recognize that they have interdependencies. To guide the design of information technology, we propose that distributed cognition be viewed as a hermeneutic process of inquiry, emphasizing the importance of individual interpretation and group dialogue. Hermeneutics provides a theory of the interpretive process through which an individual gives meaning to organizational experience. Inquiry systems provide a theory of how a community of inquirers build and test knowledge representations through dialogue. Together, hermeneutics and inquiry systems are used to propose a set of design principles to guide the development of information technology that supports distributed cognition. The design principles we describe in the paper are ownership, easy travel, multiplicity, indeterminacy, emergence and mixed forms. Applications of information technology which embody these design principles would support distributed cognition by assisting individuals in making interpretations of their situation, reflecting on them, and engaging in dialogue about them with others. The objective is to refine their own understanding of the situation and better appreciate the understandings of others, enabling them to better take their interdependencies into account in their individual actions. A project to develop such a system is discussed, along with some implications for research.

Distributed Cognition, Neuroprostheses and their Implications to Non-Physicalist Theories of Mind

This paper investigates the notion of ‘distributed cognition’ – the idea that entities external to one’s organic brain participate in one’s overall cognitive functioning – and the challenges it poses. Related to this is also a consideration of the ever-increasing ways in which neuroprostheses replace and functionally replicate organic parts of the brain. However, the literature surrounding such issues has tended to take an almost exclusively physicalist approach. The common assumption is that, given that non- physicalist theories (dualism, hylomorphism) postulate some form of immaterial ‘soul’, then they are immune from the challenges that these advances in cognitive science pose. The first aim of this paper, therefore, is to argue that this is not the case. The second aim of this paper is to attempt to elucidate a route available for the non- physicalist that will allow them to accept the notion of distributed cognition. By appealing to an Aristotelian framework, I propose that the non-physicalist can accept the notion of distributed cognition by appeal to the notion of ‘unitary life’ which I introduce as well as Aristotle’s dichotomy between active and passive mind.