Making use of things to think with: the mobilisation of social and physical resources in enabling distributed cognition

The presentation will explore the role of distributed cognition in human activity, and how we as researchers can come to understand more about the role of embodiment and situatedness in human behaviour. As a research or theoretical tool, DCog explores the interplay between mind and body, and the physical, social and cultural contexts within which activity occurs, and which form an intelligent system as an emergent property of this interaction (or, at least, can be usefully considered as forming a meta-cognitive system). Here, the role of internal mental cognitive behaviour is seen in managing the co-ordination of representations and processes. It is in this area that the presentation will focus - how the resources in settings are co-ordinated by human actors and the physical manipulations that are applied to enable the symbolic transformations necessary for distributed problem solving. Yet whilst it is itself seen as a correction to the problems of traditional cognitive science, DCog itself has some practical limitations to its use and a number of academic questions regarding its theoretical foundations, and these will also be addressed

Making use of things to think with

the mobilisation of social and physical resources in enabling distributed cognition

mark perry

Brunel University<mark.perry@brunel.ac.uk>

<people.brunel.ac.uk/~cssrmjp>

talk coverage

my interest in the area (applied research), some history

think about where the thinking is done…

‘co-ordinated problem solving’

role of mental (individual) behaviour (co-ordination)

the boundaries of DCog….limitations and problems

consider: is it really novel, interesting or useful?

DCog: traction and diffusion

meaningfulness of the use of the term it’s about cognition (or thinking!)

need to think seriously about what we mean by ‘cognition’a) how distributed action might be cognitive

and

b) what it asks about the nature of cognition

its not just distributed/collaborative work term has been diluted in the literatureneed to consider: information, representations and

representational media, and info. processing/transformations

Q: where and how do system state changes occur?

some history

several versions, appropriations and uses of the termShared/ social/ group cognition, ecological psychology,

situated cognition, situated action/ ethnomethodology, etc.

all dealing with ‘embodiment’: mind, body and world interacting and influencing one another

generally used to mean approaches to the study of the division of labour over multiple resources - other people, artefacts and/or situation

focus on Ed Hutchin’s work “DCog”

why the interest from systems analysts (and me)?1.making the jump: easy for cognitive scientists to accept -

not like ethnomethodology or activity theory (etc., etc.)2.information focused: important in designing technology

situated cognition

anthropological approach to examining cognition unit of analysis: environment not just a resource for consulting (e.g.

as a memory), but active allowing cognition to be “stretched over mind, body, activity and

setting”

example (from Lave, 1988) in maths: divide a serving of cottage cheese: “three quarters of two thirds of a

cup of cheese” did not do a mental calculation on the fractions (solution - 1/2 a cup) …but filled the cup 3/4 quarters full, tipped it out and divided it up

into four parts, removing one quarter

a demanding abstract cognitive computation solved, by making use of the environment and the solution

represented in the question wording itself, the task solution was simple

dear old Donald Norman

on cognitive artefacts“…artefacts do not actually change an individual’s

capabilities. Rather, they change the nature of the task performed by that person. When the information and processing structure of the artefact is combined with the task, the result is to expand and enhance the cognitive capabilities of the total system of human, task, and artefact”

difference lies in the boundary of analysis

…and consequently, the data collection methods applied

(re)structuring: things and organisations

revelation! (to me at least)

the structure of the world impacts on our action/s, and consequently on our information processing through physical embodiment (‘cognitive artefacts’)

and social contexts (‘culture’)

we are also actorswe can restructure the worlddesigning new tools and ways of working

DCog:principles and mechanisms

1. the boundaries of cognition do not stop with the individual

2. a range of mechanisms may be used in cognitive processes involving symbol manipulation

thus, cognitive processes may:

a) involve internal (mental) and external (in the world) structures

b) be socially distributedc) be temporally

distributedd) be spatially

distributed

managing the co-ordination of representations and processes (internal and external): resources are co-ordinated by human actors/agentsphysical manipulations enable symbolic transformationnot necessarily directly performing mental processing

on that informationi.e. applying general-purpose (co-ordination) skills and not

case by case planning/ rule execution hmm…but is this a cop out?

what is a ‘general purpose rule’?vague and undefinedsocial and physical co-ordination are hard

problems!

the role of mental (individual) behaviour

‘doing’ DCog, in an ‘abstract task space’

unit of analysis: the ‘functional system’ individuals, cognitive artefacts/media - and their

relationsboundaries set by analyst (! - note theoretical implication - !)

many approaches to ‘doing a DCog’a framework not a methodgenerally, data collection is observational - the ‘cognitive

ethnography’

examines ‘information-representation’ transitions equivalent to examining a system’s mental state

the mechanics of co-ordination

perhaps even an (embodied) architecture for distributed cognition?

key research concern: exposing how people manage their actions to bring the representations into co-ordination with one anotheraligning with (and adapting) social protocols and

organisational processesmaking physical movementscombining representations

Example:ConsCo

data collection: focus on co-ordination work

Communication at its core: in DCog, communication is not differentiated from

the computations involved in IPrepresentations are propagated through

communicative pathways: verbalnon-verbal inter-modal transformations (e.g. verbal to text) operations on tools

All can be observed directly

Length

Height

Key

Actual measurement

Expected measurement

Siteinformation

Original planview drawing

Table of sitemeasurements

Table ofmeasurementsfrom drawing

Geotechnicalreadings

Section viewsketch

Post-it noteexplanation ofdata

Annotatedsketch to seniorengineer

example 1 - media transformations

shows key representational transformations and co-ordinations in the computation in resolving the problem and communicating information to the senior engineer

time

example 2 - social co-ordination and cross media transformationsSenior engineer (SE): ‘If you look here, there’s a barrel run there’

<points at sketch generated in the meeting of a section view through a design structure>

Temporary works design co-ordinator (TWC): ‘Yes I see’.

SE: ‘So if we dig here...’ <he holds one hand to the sketch and runs a finger on the other hand along a permanent works drawing (in plan view) beside the sketch, indicating a line of reference>

TWC: ‘No you can’t do that because of drainage problems...’ <pauses> ‘...No, no, I see now’.

SE: ‘So if we cap these piles here...’ <indicates several points on the sketch>

TWC: ‘Yeah. OK. Lets do that’.

common understanding: cross-referencing external representations bringing together and aligning representations collaboratively co-ordination of representations is mediated by the senior engineer

using hands to demonstrate relationship between drawing and sketch allows him to indicate where the digging (on the sketch, seen from the

side) would have to be performed on the site (on the drawing, from an aerial view)

physically using his body to mediate this, he creates a new, shared viewpoint of the information on the two media

informational transformations

Verbally encodedmental representation:“…there’s a barrelrun…”

Plan viewdrawing

Co-ordinatesrepresentationsby pointing atsection viewsketch

Newlygeneratedsection viewsketch

Co-ordinatesrepresentations(physical andmental): “So if wedig here...’, cross-referencing drawingand sketch with hishands

(Future action)generate designbrief to send todesign engineersoff-site

time

physical and spatial embodiment: IN USE

practical mechanisms for co-ordinationsomewhat disorganised!

orienting problem solvers to information (awareness)e.g. making visible the computational structure of the task

structuring the task organisation (cognitive architecture)

e.g. division of cognitive labour achieved by managing access to information artefacts

structuring computations (co-ordinating representational transformations)e.g. mapping physical/artefactual structures to symbolic

structure

returning to broader issues

application in design

limitations

odds and endings

tool for practical application (design)

makes visible the mechanisms co-ordinating representational transformations

insights offered into how cognition is & can be distributed across people and the (increasingly) smart environments that they work and play in

a description of the informational characteristics of work shows representational properties and functions of media important in developing and introducing I.S. highlights information bottlenecks and communications breakdowns

and where not to introduce digital technologies cannot be applied directly in design

creative interpretation is necessary describes work in informational and computational terms

gives system designers a stronger model of work frames social and organisational p-s in terms of representations and

processes: terms well understood by systems designers/programmers

limitations and applicability

DCog appropriate for analysing problem solving but not all situations are best described as p-s

no clearly framed way to do a DCog analysis reasonably robust theoretical framework, but not prescriptive in its application (…nor how to apply it to systems design)

how is this co-ordination achieved by agents/actors? no (simple!) way of looking inside people’s heads

is DCog an emergent property of activity systems?… or just a useful analytical device?… … but is this any different from criticisms of GOF cog sci

out on a limb - some questions

can social and cultural factors really be of secondary interest to cognitive psychology?

if we want to understand human behaviour, is it of value to understand ‘mind’ independent of context and external resources?perhaps, in understanding ‘general purpose’ cognitive skills

in co-ordinating problem-solving resources

if language is a means of co-ordinating distributed resources to bring to bear on problems… is examining the structure of language important, or its

use?

DCog in broader use

emerging theoretical frameworkbut date of primary reference: 1995 - not superseded

widely cited in HCI literature, rarely used in anger (though frequently cited)

less commonly discussed within cog sci community

although not considered too controversial any more

clearly still relevant, but has issues...

representation and the IP metaphor

cog sci: human mind is assumed to operate through computational mechanisms

problem solving => changing problem representation changes the problem

successive transformations on a representation can transform initial state into desired state

involves a computational transformation: of a problem state (i.e. representation of the problem) through a ‘problem space’, from start state through a ‘problem space’

(with resources and constraints) into a goal state through propagation of representations across various representational

structures cognitive architecture

in human minds, representational structures are neural pathways DCog: no distinction between representational media – internal or

external – forming a system ‘boundary’

Socially Distributed Cognition: the social organisation of group problem solving

group activity is a computation realised through the creation, transformation and propagation of representational states

SDCog allows us to examine how such computations are organised, and how representations act as intermediaries in collaboration

many ways to organise the system to distribute the computational load

some better than others (speed, processing resources required, proneness to error)

division of labour determines the computational architecture of the problem solving unit establishes the resources and processes brought to bear on problem

representations system can do adaptive structuring

organising and reorganising physical and cognitive artefacts in the environment

modifying the social context