History

Distributed cognition is a school of psychology developed in the 1990s by Edwin Hutchins. Using insights from sociology, cognitive science, and the psychology of Vygotsky (cf activity theory) it emphasises the social aspects of cognition. Psychology (Classical Greek: psyche = soul or mind, logos = study of) is an academic and applied field involving the study of behavior, mind and thought and the neurological bases of behavior. ... Edwin Hutchins is a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego. ... Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies. ... Rendering of human brain based on MRI data Cognitive Science is the scientific study of the mind and brain and how they give rise to behavior. ... Lev Vygotsky Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (November 17 (November 5 (O.S.)), 1896—June 11, 1934) was a Russian developmental psychologist, discovered by the Western world in the 1960s. ... Activity theory is a Soviet psychological theory invented by Alexei Nikolaevich Leontyev, which became one of the major psychological theories in that country, being used widely in areas such as the education of disabled children and the design of equipment control panels. ...

What It Is

Distributed Cognition is a branch of cognitive science that proposes that human knowledge and cognition are not confined to the individual. Instead, it is distributed by placing memories, facts, or knowledge on the objects, individuals, and tools in our environment. Distributed cognition it is a useful approach for (re)designing social aspects of cognition by putting emphasis on the individual and their environment. Distributed cognition views a system as a set of representations, and models the interchange of information between these representations. These representations can be either in the mental space of the participants or external representations available in the environment.

Further reading

• Hutchins, E. (1995) Cognition in the Wild (ISBN 0262581469) (MIT Press).
• Hutchins, E. (1995) "How a cockpit remembers its speeds". Cognitive Science, 19, 265-288.
• Norman, D.A. (1993) "Things that make us smart" (Addison-Wesley).
• Perry, M. (2003) "Distributed Cognition". In J.M. Carroll (Ed.) "HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks: Toward an Interdisciplinary Science" (Morgan Kaufmann) 193-223.
• Rogers, Y. and Scaife, M. (1997) 'Distributed Cognition'.
• Zhang, J. & Norman, D.A. (1994) "Representations in Distributed Cognitive Tasks", Cognitive Science, 18, 87-122.