Distributed cognition: Difference between revisions

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{{Cyborg}}

'''Distributed cognition''' is an approach to [[cognitive science]] research that was developed by cognitive anthropologist [[Edwin Hutchins]] during the 1990s.<ref name="Cognition in the wild">{{cite book | vauthors = Hutchins E |title=Cognition in the wild |date=1995 |publisher=MIT Press |___location=Cambridge, Mass. |isbn=978-0-262-58146-2 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=CGIaNc3F1MgC}}</ref>

From cognitive ethnography, Hutchins argues that mental representations, which classical cognitive science held that are within the individual brain, are actually distributed in sociocultural systems that constitute the tools to think and perceive the world. Thus, a native of the Carolina Islands can perceive the sky and organize his perceptions of the constellations typical of his culture (the groupings of stars are different than in the traditional constellations of the West) and use the position of the stars in the sky as a map to orient himself in space while sailing overnight in a canoe.<ref>{{cite book | vauthors name= Hutchins E |title="Cognition in the wild |date=1995 |publisher=MIT Press |___location=Cambridge, Mass. |isbn=978-0-262-58146-2 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=CGIaNc3F1MgC}}<"/ref>

According to Hutchins, cognition involves not only the brain but also external artifacts, work teams made up of several people, and cultural systems for interpreting reality (mythical, scientific, or otherwise).

Distributed cognition theory is part of the interdisciplinary field of [[embodied cognitive science]], also called [[embodied cognition]].

Hutchins' distributed cognition theory influenced philosopher Andy Clark, who shortly after proposed his own version of the theory, calling it "extended cognition" (see, for example, the paper ''[[The Extended Mind]]'').

Hutchins' distributed cognition theory explains mental processes by taking as the fundamental unit of analysis "a collection of individuals and artifacts and their relations to each other in a particular work practice".<ref name = "Rogers_1994">{{cite journal | vauthors = Rogers Y, Ellis J | title = Distributed cognition: an alternative framework for analysing and explaining collaborative working. | journal = Journal of Information Technology | date = June 1994 | volume = 9 | issue = 2 | pages = 119–28 | doi = 10.1177/026839629400900203 | s2cid = 219981758 | url = http://www.dourish.com/classes/ics234bs03/14-RogersEllis-DistCog.pdf }}</ref>

"DCog" is a specific approach to distributed cognition (distinct from other meanings)<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1007/s13164-013-0131-x |issn=1878-5158 |volume=4 |issue=1 |pages=1–24 | vauthors = Michaelian K, Sutton J |title=Distributed Cognition and Memory Research: History and Current Directions |journal=Review of Philosophy and Psychology |date=2013-02-20 |hdl=11693/37950 |s2cid=9818565 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> which takes a computational perspective towards goal-based activity systems.<ref>{{cite web| vauthors = Perry M |title=Some simple definitions in Distributed Cognition (DCog) |url=http://people.brunel.ac.uk/~cssrmjp/homefiles/home.html|access-date=22 November 2015}}</ref>

The distributed cognition approach uses insights from [[cultural anthropology]], [[sociology]], [[embodied cognitive science]], and the psychology of [[Lev Vygotsky]] (cf. [[cultural-historical psychology]]). It emphasizes the ways that cognition is off-loaded into the environment through social and technological means. It is a framework for studying cognition rather than a type of cognition. This framework involves the coordination between individuals, artifacts and the environment.

According to Zhang & Norman (1994),<ref>{{Cite journal | doi=10.1207/s15516709cog1801_3|title = Representations in Distributed Cognitive Tasks| journal=Cognitive Science| volume=18| pages=87–122|year = 1994| vauthors = Zhang J, Norman DA | doi-access=free}}</ref> the distributed cognition approach has three key components:

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[[Collaborative tagging]] on the [[World Wide Web]] is one of the most recent developments in technological support for distributed cognition. Beginning in 2004<ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Mika P | chapter = Ontologies are us: A unified model of social networks and semantics. | title = International semantic web conference | series = Lecture Notes in Computer Science | date = November 2005 | volume = 3729 | pages = 522–536 | publisher = Springer | ___location = Berlin, Heidelberg. | doi = 10.1007/11574620_38 | isbn = 978-3-540-29754-3 }}</ref> and quickly becoming a standard on websites, collaborative tagging allows users to upload or select materials (e.g. pictures, music files, texts, websites) and associate tags with these materials. Tags can be chosen freely, and are similar to keywords. Other users can then browse through tags; a click on a tag connects a user to similarly tagged materials. Tags furthermore enable [[tag cloud]]s, which graphically represent the popularity of tags, demonstrating co-occurrence relations between tags and thus jump from one tag to another.

Dcog has also been used to understand learning and communication in clinical settings and to obtain an integrated view of clinical workplace learning. It has been observed how medical actors use and connect gestural practices, along with visual and haptic structures of their own bodies and of artifacts such as technological instruments and computational devices. In so doing they co-construct complex, multimodal representations that go beyond the mental representations usually studied from a cognitive perspective of learning.<ref name="Pimmer_2013">{{cite journal | vauthors = Pimmer C, Pachler N, Genewein U | title = Reframing clinical workplace learning using the theory of distributed cognition | journal = Academic Medicine : Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges | volume = 88 | issue = 9 | pages = 1239–45 | date = September 2013 | pmid = 23887014 | doi = 10.1097/ACM.0b013e31829eec0a | s2cid = 12371185 | doi-access = free }}</ref>

Distributed cognition can also be seen through cultures and communities. Learning certain habits or following certain traditions is seen as cognition distributed over a group of people. Exploring distributed cognition through community and culture is one way to understand how it may work.

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Another well-researched site for analyzing distributed cognition and applying the discovered insights towards the design of more optimal systems is aviation, where both cockpits and air traffic control environments have been studied as scenes that technologically and socially distribute cognition through systems of externalized representational media. It is not the cognitive performance and expertise of any one single person or machine that is important for the continued operation or the landing and takeoff of airplanes. The cognition is distributed over the personnel, sensors, and machinery both in the plane and on the ground, including but not limited to the controllers, pilots and crew as a whole.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Hutchins E | title = How a Cockpit Remembers Its Speeds | journal = Cognitive Science | date = July 1995 | volume = 19 | issue = 3 | pages = 265–88 | doi = 10.1207/s15516709cog1903_1 | doi-access = free }}</ref>

Hutchins also examined another scene of distributed cognition within the context of navigating a US navy vessel.<ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Caroll JM |title= HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks: Toward a Multidisciplinary Science |date=2003 |publisher=Morgan Kaufmann |___location=San Francisco, Calif. |isbn=978-0-08-049141-7}}</ref> In his book on USS Palau,<ref>{{cite book | vauthors name= Hutchins E |title="Cognition in the wild |date=1995 |publisher=MIT Press |___location=Cambridge, Mass. |isbn=978-0-262-58146-2 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=CGIaNc3F1MgC}}<"/ref> he explains in detail how distributed cognition is manifested through the interaction between crew members as they interpret, process, and transform information into various representational states in order to safely navigate the ship. In this functional unit, crew members (e.g. pelorus operators, bearing takers, plotters, and the ship's captain) play the role of actors who transform information into different representational states (i.e. triangulation, landmark sightings, bearings, and maps). In this context, navigation is embodied through the combined efforts of actors in the functional unit.

In his study on process, representation and task world, Mark Perry<ref name = "Perry_1998" /> demonstrated how distributed cognition analysis can be conducted in a field study. His example was design analysis in [[Civil engineering]]. In this work, he showed how an information processing approach can be applied by carrying a detailed analysis of the background of the study - goals and resources, inputs and outputs, representations and processes, and transformational activity, "how information was transformed from the design drawings and site onto tables of measurements (different representations)" and then onto "a graphical representation" which provided a clearer demonstration of the relationship between the two data sets.<ref name = "Perry_1998" />

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==Quotes==

On [[educational psychology]]:

{{quoteblockquote|People think in conjunction and partnership with others and with the help of culturally provided tools and implements.|Salomon|1997 p. xiii}}

On [[cognitive science]]:

{{quoteblockquote|Nervous systems do not form representations of the world, they can only form representations of interactions with the world.<ref>{{cite web | vauthors = Hutchins E | title = Overview of Distributed Cognition Lecture | url = http://hci.ucsd.edu/102a/11Lectures/DCogOverview.pdf | work = Distributed Cognition and Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, Department of Cognitive Science | publisher = University of California, San Diego }}</ref>}}

{{quoteblockquote|The emphasis on finding and describing "knowledge structures" that are somewhere "inside" the individual encourages us to overlook the fact that human cognition is always situated in a complex sociocultural world and cannot be unaffected by it.|Hutchins|1995 p. xiii}}

== See also ==