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  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition
  • Cited by 91
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
June 2012
Print publication year:
2008
Online ISBN:
9780511816826
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511816826
Subjects:
Life Sciences, Pharmacology, Psychology, Psychology: General Interest, Cognition
Series:
Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology
Collection:
Cambridge Handbooks of Psychology
Information

Book description

Since its inception some fifty years ago, cognitive science has seen a number of sea changes. Perhaps the best known is the development of connectionist models of cognition as an alternative to classical, symbol-based approaches. A more recent - and increasingly influential - trend is that of dynamical-systems-based, ecologically oriented models of the mind. Researchers suggest that a full understanding of the mind will require systematic study of the dynamics of interaction between mind, body, and world. Some argue that this new orientation calls for a revolutionary new metaphysics of mind, according to which mental states and processes, and even persons, literally extend into the environment. This book is a guide to this movement in cognitive science. Each chapter tackles either a specific area of empirical research or specific sector of the conceptual foundation underlying this research.

Reviews


“Situated cognition has become a hot topic in cognitive science, encompassing a broad range of disciplines and theories concerning the relationship between mind, body and the world. The Cambridge Handbook provides an indispensable guide to the best ideas and controversies concerning the problems of embodied, embedded, distributed and situated cognition.

Publication of the Handbook is a landmark in bringing together the foremost theorists in a comprehensive, interdisciplinary collection. The chapters are original overviews concerning historical, foundational, theoretical and empirical issues from philosophy, neuroscience, linguistics, psychology, AI and robotics.

The collection is a definitive resource for understanding the central issues in cognitive science today concerning mental representations, their meaning and their grounding interactions with the body and the external world.”
—Dr. Peter Slezak, University of New South Wales

"...If you are interested in exploring what all the buzz is about concerning terms like situated cognition, situativity, action theory, embodied cognition, embodiment, and distributed cognition, then The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition is worth your perusal...tantalizing ideas and pieces of evidence all in search of a testable theory of cognition..."
—Richard E. Mayer, PsycCRITIQUES [September 2, 2009, Vol. 54]

"... A fascinating feature of the Handbook is that there is tremendous variability amongst contributors in terms of their willingness to adopt the more radical consequences of the situated approach... Given that the more radical ideas presented in The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition have the potential to completely redefine the proper domain of cognitive psychology and cognitive science, it is essential reading..."
—Michael Dawson, Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne

"...This volume is a rich source of ideas and references for further exploration, covering every aspect of cognitive activity and engaging the full range of supporters and opponents of the basic ideas. References are listed separately for each chapter, but there is an integrated index. The work will be essential background for any course in cognitive science, and it can also serve as a convenient desk reference for researchers in AI, robotics, and other systems that require careful consideration of the relation between thinking and the world."
—H. Van Dyke Parunak, Computing Reviews

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Contents

Page 2 of 2

Contents
  • Chapter 22 - Is Consciousness Embodied?
    pp 419-436
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Spatial thinking is essential for survival. Elementary to survival is knowing where to go to find food, water, and shelter and knowing how to return, as well as how to gather the food and water when they are located. Space for the mind is not like space for the physicist or surveyor, where the dimensions of space are primary and things in space are located with respect to those dimensions. The body is the first space encountered, even before birth. Experience of other spaces is channeled through the body, through perception and action. The space immediately surrounding the body is the space of actual or potential perception and action. The space we experience as we hike in the mountains or go from home to work or wander through a museum is the space of navigation. Gestures have benefits both for those making the gestures and for those watching them.
  • Chapter 23 - Emotions in the Wild
    pp 437-453
  • The Situated Perspective on Emotion
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter presents an overview of situated work on memory and remembering. It covers relevant movements in cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, the social sciences and social philosophy, and distributed cognition. One respect in which a thoroughly situated approach to memory can push the existing ecological focus on real-life or everyday memory phenomena further is in presenting constructive processes in remembering, and, more generally, memory's openness to various forms of influence as more mundane or natural than inevitably dangerous. The chapter merges these ideas about interpersonal memory dynamics with the postconnectionist picture of human beings as essentially incomplete machines, apt to incorporate what has become apt for incorporation. Some of the liveliest recent applications of situated cognition to the case of memory show that systems of exograms are not necessarily meant to be permanent or limitlessly transmissible, or turn out to be less stable in practice than in intention.
  • Chapter 24 - The Social Context of Cognition
    pp 454-466
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Although modern researchers have entertained many accounts of the conceptual system, the semantic memory view has dominated. This way of thinking about the conceptual system arises from Tulving's classic distinction between episodic and semantic memory. The subsections of this chapter introduce the constructs of reenactment, simulator, and simulation, respectively. According to this account, the conceptual system shares mechanisms with modality-specific systems, such that the conceptual system is not modular. As a consequence, conceptual representations are at least partially modal, not completely amodal. The chapter presents an analogy: conceptual representations are situated because perceptions are situated. It suggests that concepts are situated because of evolutionary convenience and computational efficacy. The chapter presents definitions for concepts, situations, and the relations between them. It presents the central construct of situated conceptualization.
  • Chapter 25 - Cognition for Culture
    pp 467-479
  • View abstract

    Summary

    In the classical theory, the terms problem and task are interchangeable. Allen Newell and Herbert Simon introduced the expression task environment to designate an abstract structure that corresponds to a problem. It is called an environment because subjects who improve task performance are assumed to be adapting their behavior to some sort of environmental constraints, the fundamental structure of the problem. Task environments are differentiated from problem spaces, the representation subjects are assumed to mentally construct when they understand a task correctly. Puzzle and game cognition seems to fit the formal, knowledge-lean approach. The ideas of task environment and problem space have a formal elegance that is seductive. The four areas in which adherents of situated cognition ought to be offering theories are: hints, affordances, thinking with things, and self-cueing. Evidently, self-cueing helps beat the data driven nature of cognition.
  • Chapter 26 - Neuroethology
    pp 480-504
  • From Morphological Computation to Planning
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Decision analysis is concerned with the development of prescriptive methods for improving difficult real-life decisions. The basic principle is to divide and conquer, a complex decision is broken down into small manageable parts, judgments are made with respect to each part, and small parts are recombined to form an overall evaluation. Sequential-sampling models such as decision-field theory can be viewed as dynamic extensions of the traditional decision theories. Therefore, sequential sampling models provide a theoretical bridge between traditional decision theories and naturalistic decisions. Three related programs of research have examined judgment or decision making through what could be called a situated cognition perspective. Dynamic theories of decision making have the power to explain the basic findings from laboratory experiments, such as context-dependent preferences, as well as new phenomena that arise in the study of naturalistic decisions.

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