Distributed Cognition and Memory Research: History and Current Directions

Abstract

According to the hypotheses of distributed and extended cognition, remembering does not always occur entirely inside the brain but is often distributed across heterogeneous systems combining neural, bodily, social, and technological resources. These ideas have been intensely debated in philosophy, but the philosophical debate has often remained at some distance from relevant empirical research, while empirical memory research, in particular, has been somewhat slow to incorporate distributed/extended ideas. This situation, however, appears to be changing, as we witness an increasing level of interaction between the philosophy and the empirical research. In this editorial, we provide a high-level historical overview of the development of the debates around the hypotheses of distributed and extended cognition, as well as relevant theory and empirical research on memory, considering both the role of memory in theoretical debates around distributed/extended ideas and strands of memory research that resonate with those ideas; we emphasize recent trends towards increased interaction, including new empirical paradigms for investigating distributed memory systems. We then provide an overview of the special issue itself, drawing out a number of general implications from the contributions, and conclude by sketching promising directions for future research on distributed memory. K. Michaelian ( ) BilkentÜniversitesi,

Cutting Brussels sprouts: Collaboration involving persons with dementia

“…Thus cognitive functions like executive control, attention, and working memory, as well as episodic memory, can be seen as distributed functions implying that they at least partially are properties of the ecosystem (Dahlbäck, Kristiansson & Stjernberg, 2013;Hutchins, 2010;Michaelian & Sutton, 2013). As a consequence the boundaries between individuals in collaborative activities become porous, and the individuals become instead parts in a complex activity.…”

“…Developmental psychologists have suggested that collaboration between children as well as with grown-ups are essential for understanding psychological development (Lave & Wenger, 1991;Rogoff, 1998). Other researchers have pointed out that many cognitive tasks as well as the performance of many everyday chores presuppose collaboration between several persons and that they share cognitive resources in the collaborative process (Barnier, Sutton, Harris & Wilson, 2008;Clark, 1996;Hutchins, 1996;Michaelian & Sutton, 2013;Sawyer, 2003). Finally a number of researchers have shown how persons with cognitive and communicative disabilities can communicate and solve problems through collaboration with others and compensate cognitive loss by drawing on the cognitive and linguistic resources of other participants (Dixon & Gould, 1998;Goodwin, 2004;Harris, Keil, Sutton, Barnier & McIlwain, 2011;Müller & Mok, 2013).…”

Remembering as Public Practice: Wittgenstein, memory, and distributed cognitive ecologies

“…Many psychologists who are remorselessly constructivist and have no interest at all in searching for unique neural engrams nevertheless retain the default assumption that memory and mind are still internal, and see strong claims that cognition is distributed or spread across brain, body, and world as highly suspect. But after 30 years of postconnectionist theory in which anti-individualist lines of thought from a range of philosophical traditions have increasingly found themselves at the heart of cognitive scientific debate (Michaelian & Sutton 2013), it is no longer legitimate to characterize all the sciences of memory as inevitably dominated by forms of individualism.…”

“…The influences of Bartlett and Vygotsky intensified over the 1980s and 1990s across a variety of traditions and sub-disciplines, with new methods emerging in each area to adapt to the challenges posed when remembering is not isolated from its environments and contexts. These shifts can be traced, for example, in ecological and practical memory movements (Neisser 1997), in the expansion of applied memory research in real-world settings (Rubin 1995;Saito 2000), in the extraordinary efflorescence of rigorous work on the socio-cultural interactions at the heart of the development of autobiographical memory in young children (Fivush & Haden 2003;Nelson & Fivush 2004), in the rebirth of the scientific study of autobiographical remembering after nearly a century of neglect (Conway 1990), and in waves of psychological work on social, shared, collaborative, and transactive memory (Hirst & Manier 2008;Michaelian & Sutton 2013;Wegner 1986;Weldon 2001). These are now entirely mainstream research traditions.…”

“…In van Gelder's terms, cognitive systems are 'complexes of continuous, simultaneous, and mutually determining change': the cognitive system is not just the encapsulated brain; rather, since the nervous system, body, and environment are all constantly changing and simultaneously influencing each other, the true cognitive system is a single unified system embracing all three ... interaction between the inner and the outer is ... a matter of coupling, such that both sets of processes continually influence each other's direction of change. (1995: 373) The unit of analysis for cognitive science would thus have to expand, potentially including not only the individual brain and body, but other people and groups, the physical environment, social interaction, cultural norms, artifacts and technologies, thus bringing these new anti-individualist movements into close contact with relatively independent anti-individualist traditions in cognitive anthropology, ecological psychology, educational and social theory, science studies, robotics, developmental and cultural psychology, and phenomenological philosophy (Donald 1991;Hutchins 1995;Clark 1997;Lave 1998;Latour 1999;Robbins & Aydede 2009;Sutton 2010;Michaelian & Sutton 2013).…”