What Is Distributed Cognition?

Distributed cognition (Distributed Cognition) is a system that includes the cognitive subject and environment, and is a new unit of analysis that includes all things that participate in cognition. Distributed cognition is a cognitive activity, an information processing process for internal and external representations. Distributed cognition means that cognition is distributed among individuals, among individuals, media, environment, culture, society and time.

Distributed cognition

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Distributed cognition (Distributed Cognition) is a system that includes the cognitive subject and environment, and is a new unit of analysis that includes all things that participate in cognition. Distributed cognition is a cognitive activity, an information processing process for internal and external representations. Distributed cognition means that cognition is distributed among individuals, among individuals, media, environment, culture, society and time.

Chinese name

Distributed cognition

Foreign name

Distributed Cognition

Is an include

System of cognitive subject and environment

Time

1879

The concept of distributed cognition

Distributed cognition (Distributed Cognition) is a system that includes the cognitive subject and environment, and is a new unit of analysis that includes all things that participate in cognition. Distributed cognition is a cognitive activity, an information processing process for internal and external representations. Distributed cognition means that cognition is distributed among individuals, among individuals, media, environment, culture, society and time.

(1) Cognition is distributed within individuals. Knowledge is unevenly distributed in the brain. An important theory in cognitive science and cognitive neurosciencethe module theorysupports this view. According to the module theory, the human brain is composed of highly specialized and relatively independent modules in structure and function. The complex and ingenious combination of these modules is the basis for achieving complex and sophisticated cognitive functions.

(2) Cognition is distributed in the media. Cognitive activity can be viewed as a computational process that conveys a state of representation between media. Among them, the medium can be internal (such as individual memory) or external (such as maps, charts, computer databases, etc.).

(3) Cognition is culturally distributed. Culture refers to things shared by people such as norms, modeled beliefs, values, symbols, and tools. Culture is modeled, but not uniform. Culture needs to be experienced or felt in face-to-face communication. Culture influences cognitive processes in an indirect way. For example, people may have different cognitive styles in different cultural contexts.

(4) Cognition is distributed in society. In specific situations (such as in restaurants), cognitive activities such as memory and decision-making are distributed not only in tools (menu, chair and table arrangement, table number), but also in rules (such as paying bills before leaving the restaurant after eating, etc.) , Distributed among people who are responsible for different types of work (for example, waiters, not dishwashers, responsible for all aspects of dining in the restaurant).

(5) Cognition is distributed in time. Cognition is distributed horizontally in the time dimension unique to each cognitive subject, and vertically in the past, present, and future of a particular cognitive subject. For example, adults often explain children's behavior based on their own past or cultural experience.

To sum up, distributed cognition emphasizes the nature of the distribution of cognitive phenomena between cognitive subjects and the environment. The theory and methods of distributed cognition originate from cognitive science, cognitive anthropology, and social science, but in fact, the idea of distributed cognition has been proposed shortly after the establishment of the first psychological laboratory in 1879. .