Topic 8a - Distributed Cognition

Question 1

Main Idea

Answer 1

• Cognition is done partially by the environment

- Traditional wisdom is that cognition is inside the brain

Question 2

Relation to Symbolic Systems

Answer 2

-Symbols are not stored purely in our head; they represent things in the world, and if those things weren’t there it wouldn’t mean anything

Question 3

Relation to Embodied Cognition

Answer 3

-

Question 4

Roman Numerals

Answer 4

• The symbols are technically the same thing, but you can’t do long division with roman numerals
• We’re only trained to work with one kind of symbol, which exists externally to us

Question 5

Bartender Problem

Answer 5

• Bartenders have to remember a lot of information
• Put differently-shaped glasses in front of people to “store” information in the environment
• Experience is not of the drink orders, but rather of the system which tells them what the drink orders are

Question 6

What Hutchins Thinks We’re Good At

Answer 6

• Recognizing objects
• Modelling simple dynamics of the world
• Manipulating objects
• We’re better at doing these things (which use the world in our thinking) than purely symbolic reasoning

Question 7

Different ways to be distributed

Answer 7

• Across members of a social group (no one person knows everything about the whole system)
• Across internal/external structures (putting things out in the world like in the bartender problem)
• Across time (leaving a note for yourself)

Question 8

Chimps doing same/different task

Answer 8

• Square is same, triangle is different, chimps have to figure out the pattern
• Only chimps trained with simpler patterns were able to figure out more complicated ones (or ones trained with sign language)
• Chimps with symbol training went from low-order to high-order relationships

Question 9

Numerical representation of the brain

Answer 9

• Two kinds of representation: 1, 2, or 3, which is in the parietal lobe; and exact arithmetic, which is in the frontal lobe
• Number representation have become more complicated over time
• Our knowledge of numbers has to do with our understanding of the world, and how we communicate that knowledge to other humans

Question 10

Abacus Champions Video

Answer 10

• Kids get so good at using an abacus that they can perform immensely complicated calculations using an imaginary abacus
• Kids still need to make motor movements, suggesting a combination of symbolic representations with an interaction with the world