6.12 Reading Response

Distributed Cognition & Activity Theory

Texts:
Hutchins, How a Cockpit Remembers Its Speeds

In his article, Hutchins attempts to illustrate distributed cognition by examining the cognitive operations of landing a plane, specifically how pilots coordinate activity, technologies, and media and how this process contributes to the cockpit system. Although his analysis is very long, detailed, and somewhat complicated, I will attempt to briefly summarize here Hutchins’ main points in order to illustrate how they display distributed cognition and ultimately relate to our work in this class.

Distributed CognitionBecause many of us are not familiar with cognitive theories, I decided to do a little research into cognition to provide some background to understand better what Hutchins was talking about. By definition, distributed cognition is “a branch of cognitive science that proposes cognition and knowledge are not confined to an individual; rather, it is distributed across objects, individuals, artefacts, and tools in the environment” (“Distributed Cognition”). This theory views human knowledge and cognition as not being confined to the individual, but rather strewn throughout a system, distributed by placing memories, facts, and/or knowledge on the objects, individuals, and tools in an environment ("Socially distributed cognition”).This system, then, is seen as a set of representations where an interchange of information takes place either in the mental space of participants or external representations in the environment ("Socially distributed cognition”).

This framework looks at the coordination between individuals, artifacts and the environment in order to express cognition as “the processing of information occurring from interaction with symbols in the world” ("Socially distributed cognition”). Its overall goal is to explain “how distributed units are coordinated by analyzing the interactions between individuals, the representational media used, and the environment within which the activity takes place” (“Distributed Cognition”). This ties into how Hutchins mentions that the article presents “a theoretical framework that takes a distributed socio-technical system rather than an individual mind as its primary unit of analysis” (Hutchins 265). Like he mentions, the unit of analysis in distributed cognition focuses on “systems that dynamically reconfigure their sub-systems to accomplish functions individuals, artifacts, their relations to each other” (“Distributed Cognition”).

Therefore, because it emphasizes the social aspects of cognition, the theory of distributed cognition can serve as a “useful descriptive framework that describes human work systems in informational and computational terms” (“Distributed Cognition”), explaining why Hutchins uses the cockpit example as an effective way to show his point.

Key PointsIn his article “How a Cockpit Remembers its Speeds,” Hutchins examines commercial airline cockpits as cognitive systems in an attempt to illustrate that the cognitive properties of systems are not due to the sum of individual processes. He points out that “systems that are larger than an individual may have cognitive properties in their own right that cannot be reduced to the cognitive properties of individual persons” (Hutchins 266). Hutchins further argues that “rather than trying to map the findings of cognitive psychological studies of individuals directly onto the individual pilots in the cockpit, we should map the conceptualization of the cognitive system onto a new unit of analysis: the cockpit as a whole" (267).

To then demonstrate this, Hutchins continues with his own analysis of the cockpit. He points out certain cockpit operations and interactions deal with how “information is represented and how representations are transformed and propagated through the system” (Hutchins 286-7). In a thoroughly abridged summary of his analysis, Hutchins explains that pilots must perform a variety of operations in order to land a plane safely, including decreasing speed, maintaining lift, and changing the shape of the wings. These operations involve a range of cognitive, perceptual and memory tasks. Thus, in order to do all of these, he describes that a variety of things take place in the cockpit: calculating proper speeds based on weight, handling and setting physical markers (speed cards and bugs), looking at dials and instruments, verbal communication, etc.

Let’s look at memory tasks as an example. While memory is normally thought to be an individual and internal psychological function, memory processes can actually be distributed among human agents or between them and external representational devices (Hutchins 284). In the case of the cockpit, while the memory process emerges from the activity of the pilots, so much of the memory function takes place outside of the individual (286). The “memory tasks in the cockpit may be accomplished by functional systems which transcend the boundaries of the individual actor” (Hutchins 284).  Instead of being primarily individual, remembering is a function of the system. It is achieved through interaction of the pilots and factors in their environment.

The pilots use both internal and external cognitive representations, the latter resulting from the system’s representations and media. There are a variety of devices that participate in this functional system to accomplish memory tasks. Hutchins explains that these things, such as the physical markers and verbal exchanges, are not simply memory aids, but devices that permit reconfigurations of functional systems. For example, adding speed bugs to systems doesn’t alter the participants’ memories, but instead permits “a different set of processes to be assembled into a functional system that achieves the same results” (Hutchins 283). The speed bugs don’t actually help the pilots remember speeds; they are part of the process for how the cockpit system remembers speeds (283).

Technological devices, interactions, and representations of different media affect the flow of information and give the cockpit system its unique properties (286, 287). All together, the way these various elements  interact and function within the cockpit system allow the operations necessary to land safely be distributed not individually, but across the system temporally, socially, spatially, and perceptually. By distributing these various operations between participants and objects, individuals are assigned less tasks and can more easily manage them. Hutchins says “a change in the nature of the representation of information results in a change in the nature of the cognitive task facing the pilot” (283). A distribution of cognitive labor between pilots and devices makes the demands made on the individuals are more easily managed.

In somewhat of a summary, Hutchins is arguing that cognitive activity is not exclusively internal so we cannot look at it individually. Rather it relies on the situational environment so we must look at it as a functional system, paying attention to all of the actors, representations, and media at play.

Connections to Activity Theory Hutchins’ point of transferring the focus from an individual to larger system ties in directly to our study of activity systems. He attempts to illustrate how factors in an environment can provide various necessary parts, and I recognized how many of the things he points out could be identified as part of an activity system. For example, the pilots could be seen as the subjects and the motivation or outcome would be landing the plane safely. Mediating tools would be the various devices they use, such as the speed bugs and cards and also their verbal communication. Rules would be some of their memory (or past experience) about how to land the plane, also the necessary speeds and weights, and aviation regulations. The division of labor would be how all of the necessary operations are distributed among the crew and their technologies/media. These are just a few of the things I notice, but obviously there are many more. Either way, how distributed cognition looks at the representation, transformation, and dissemination of information across a system is much like how we look at all of the elements in an activity system. It is how they all work together that we should focus on to understand it, not just one individual part. By looking at systems as a whole, through either perspective, we can better analyze and understand various parts of the system and how they interact and play a role in the larger situation.

Works Cited
“Distributed Cognition (DCog).” Learning-Theories.com Knowledge Base and Webliography. Learning Theories, n.d. Web. 11 June 2012. <http://www.learning-theories.com/distributed-cognition-dcog.html>.

Hutchins, Edwin. “How a Cockpit Remembers Its Speeds.” Cognitive Science 19 (1995): 265-288. Print.

"Socially distributed cognition." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 24 March 2012. Web. 11 June 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socially_distributed_cognition>.