COGS557 SITUATED AND DISTRIBUTED COGNITION

Course Objectives

By the end of the course students will explore the implications of claims such as (i) cognition depends not only on the brain but also in the body (the embodiment thesis), (ii) cognitive activity routinely exploits structure in the natural and social environment (the embedding thesis), and (iii) the boundaries of cognition extend beyond the boundaries of individual organisms (the extended/distributed cognition thesis). Students will be expected to compare insights obtained from situated analyses of cognition with other methods/conceptual frameworks they are familiar with. They will also be introduced a particular research method that they can employ to investigate cognitive phenomena from a situated perspective.

Course Content

this course will introduce topics that are gaining increasing interest in cognitive science, such as embodiment, cognitive artifacts, affordances, extended cognition, distributed/group cognition and intersubjectivity. the course involves several readings that offer a re-examination of various domains of cognitive science such as thinking, reasoning, planning, learning, perception, representation and communication from a situated cognition perspective. Interaction Analysis will be introduced as a research metedology to study various aspects of cognition from a situated cognition perspective. Excerpts from online chat logs and face to face interactions will be analyzed from both conventional and situated perspectivies to discuss existing theoritical and empirical positions regarding various cognitive processes such as reasoning, perception and social interaction.

Course Learning Outcomes

This course will allow students to learn about emerging concepts and theories in Cognitive Science that focus on the interplay between the individual agent and its social/material context to study cognition. The course will complement the perspectives offered by other disciplines of the program by providing a situated action perspective towards fundamental cognitive mechanisms such as reasoning, planning and social cognition. The conceptual and theoretical aspects of the course will also be supplemented by empirical case studies of social interaction. Hence, students will have a chance to critically evaluate various theoretical positions in cognitive science by conducting empirical analysis of social interaction. This will allow students to explore qualitative methodologies used in several fields related to Cognitive Science such as cognitive anthropology, socio-linguistics and learning sciences.