DistributedCognition
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Distributed Cognition is a descriptive framework of cognition proposed by Edwin Hutchins as influenced by Vygotsky and Minsky. Distributed Cognition posits that cognitive processes are not restricted to the mind of an individual, but are instead, spread over many people, tools and artifacts in the social and physical environment. According to this framework, cognitive processes may also be spread over time, such that the products of an earlier event may impact a later event. This framework offers researchers an alternate definition of cognition; one which allows for cognition to be shared with machines, or technologies.
Distributed cognition assumes that cognitive systems, such as a collaborative group of people, have cognitive properties that are different from lone individuals within the system. Within a community, members may develop symbols and a shared lexicon to ease communication. Over time, individuals from the community may adopt the emergent syntax as a cognitive artifact, for their own use as a functional skill. Distributed cognition allows for the organization of functional skills into cognitive functional systems, through the use of cognitive artifacts.
References:
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Hutchins, E. (2000). Distributed Cognition. Available online: http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/Anthro179a/DistributedCognition.pdf
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Norman, D. A. (1993) Things that make us smart. Defending human attributes in the age of the machine. New York: Addison-Wesley.
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Rogers, Y. (1997). A Brief introduction to distributed cognition. Available online: http://mcs.open.ac.uk/yr258/papers/dcog/dcog-brief-intro.pdf
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Solomon, G. (1993). Distributed cognition: Psychological and educational considerations. The Cambridge University Press. Available online: http://web.stanford.edu/~roypea/RoyPDF%20folder/A67_Pea_93_DI_CUP.pdf
"Neither the bare hand nor the unaided intellect has much power; the work is done by tools and assistance, and the intellect needs them as much as the hand."
Francis Bacon, The New Organon, 1620
Overview of Distributed Cognition
Additional Resources
Introduction to Communities of Practice
http://wenger-trayner.com/theory/
VIDEO: Dr. Etienne Wenger: Learning in landscapes of practice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn3joQSQm4o
Dr Etienne Wenger presented 'Learning in landscapes of practice: recent developments in social learning theory' on Wednesday 1 May 2013 as part of the Festival of Research in the Brighton Fringe.
VIDEO: Transactive Memory and Distributed Cognitive Ecologies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1PsD6LF3fE
John Sutton, Macquarie University, Department of Cognitive Science. This presentation introduces theoretical and empirical work on distributed cognitive ecologies as a framework for addressing web science and the mind. It surveys recent accounts of the effect of new technologies on human memory, with a focus on transactive memory theory. It embeds recent empirical findings on the ways we remember in conjunction with each other and with online systems in a broader picture of socially distributed remembering. In place of metaphysical concerns about extended cognition and popular worries about the erosion of natural memory, it suggests a number of rich research possibilities for integrating the cognitive and social sciences.
VIDEO: Domains and Dimensions of Group Cognition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ0lj1Mf-Co
Georg Theiner, Villanova University, Department of Philosophy. Groups of people working together in a collaborative fashion can accomplish things that would completely baffle individual human beings. The nature, speed, scope, and interdependence of group collaboration have been dramatically expanded by web-based technologies which support the large-scale distribution of cognition across space, time, and people. This development has led many people to speak of groups as 'distributed cognitive systems' in their own right. But what exactly does that mean? Building on the psychological infrastructure of joint and collective intentionality (Tomasello, 2014), I distinguish between various forms of joint cognition, distributed cognition, and collective cognition, and illustrate the resulting taxonomy with research from various fields and cognitive domains.