2. You’re stuck in an airport in a foreign country, and you need to find a phone to call home...

3.    

4. So what do you really need? What would help you? A sign like this would be all the help in the world... why?

5. Focuses on two elements of info.processing: 1. a b s t r a c t s y m b o l s all senses are converted to electrochemical impulses & processed in the mind 2. r u l e s we operate through propositional networks & scripts the problem / situation is processed by our minds – we use specific if-then rule statements to choose appropriate actions in response. Computational Theory of Mind (cognitivism)

6. 1.“Chinese Room” problem Lecture opener illustrates this concept. How do abstract symbols ever attain meaning? 2.Common sense problems How do you know what to do in order to cross a street? Isn’t the specific situation always changing? Two problems to consider…

7. How do symbols come to take on meaning in the first place?? Computational Theory of Mind Symbols are defined in terms of more symbols Distributed Cognition If symbols are to be meaningful, they must be grounded in the world & our experiences of it 1. Perception & Action We have physical bodies. Interaction by, through, & with them fundamentally shapes how we construe the world Affordances & constraints of various tools 2. Culture! Meaning vs. Information

8. Tacit Assumptions 1.The mind & world are wholly separate World = objective & stable Mind is capable of knowing the world by representing it in symbolic terms in the head 2.Action understood in terms of symbolic mental representations & rules for manipulating them 3.Mental representations = abstractions from the particularities of specific situations The more abstract, the greater the “transfer” (i.e., chances for use in action) 4.How cognition is realized in the brain is of little importance (except to connectionist theorists) Use of computer metaphor despite obvious differences Body is left out of the picture Computational Theory of Mind

9. Info.Processing Assumption #1. The mind & world are wholly separate World = objective & stable Mind is capable of knowing the world by representing it in symbolic terms in the head Distributed Cognition The mind & the world are fundamentally interrelated & interconnected with one another  The character of the world is not given – we construe it in particular ways at different times.  How we construe the world is shaped by the structure of our brain, our body, & our specific physical and social context. 

10. In real world problem-solving, rarely are problems entirely represented in the head  We use the environment as a computational device  We use cognitive artifacts as computational devices (tools, representations) Cognition is mediated by artifacts & the environment in systems of activity. Info.Processing Assumption #2. Action understood in terms of symbolic mental representations of the world & rules for manipulating them. Distributed Cognition

11. Compared with novices, experts rely more (not less) on environmental sources of information Long division: artifact is part of computation, external not internal Scribner’s dairy workers: using problem-solving context increases efficiency Wason card task: changing the ‘cover story’ changes the problem-solving activity   Representations of the world are not abstract, disembodied, and detached from the world but arise in the course of activity. Cognition is opportunistic and improvised. Info.Processing Assumption #3. Mental representations = abstractions from the particularities of specific situations The more abstract, the greater the transfer (i.e., chances for use in action) Distributed Cognition

12. The mind & the world are fundamentally interconnected with one another. Cognition is mediated by artifacts & the environment in systems of activity. Representations of the world are not abstract, disembodied, and detached from the world but arise in the course of activity. Cognition is opportunistic and improvised. The Take Home Points… Cognition is (inter)action in the material (& social) world Cognition is best construed as distributed across a system including the individual, the environment, tools & artifacts, (& other people) So, our focus needs to be on activity situated in its everyday contexts (not information flow in one person’s head) In Sum…

13. Activity (5 points) These two problems represent limitations of the computational theory of mind. Pick a situation from your life where you might see ONE of these problems instantiated, and discuss how a distributed cognition theorist might explain how thinking works in that situation. Abstract symbols problem (lecture opener) - If symbols are represented in terms of more symbols “in the head,” then how do you ever achieve meaning? Common sense problem (crossing the street, etc) - If possible actions are represented as if-then statements in the head, then how is it possible to “just do” anything when the context is always slightly different?

14. Rule: If the card has a vowel on one side, it has an even number on the other side. Wason 4-card Task AD47 