Distributed cognition as a theoretical framework for information visualization

Even though information visualization (InfoVis) research has matured in recent years, it is generally acknowledged that the field still lacks supporting, encompassing theories. In this paper, we argue that the distributed cognition framework can be used to substantiate the theoretical foundation of InfoVis. We highlight fundamental assumptions and theoretical constructs of the distributed cognition approach, based on the cognitive science literature and a real life scenario. We then discuss how the distributed cognition framework can have an impact on the research directions and methodologies we take as InfoVis researchers. Our contributions are as follows. First, we highlight the view that cognition is more an emergent property of interaction than a property of the human mind. Second, we argue that a reductionist approach to study the abstract properties of isolated human minds may not be useful in informing InfoVis design. Finally we propose to make cognition an explicit research agenda, and discuss the implications on how we perform evaluation and theory building.     

Distribution of cognition between minds and artifacts: Augmentation of mediation?

Two approaches to externally distributed individual cognition are contrasted in the paper. The first begins with making a distinction between minds and artifacts, both considered as structural components of larger-scale cognitive systems, while the second focuses on the dynamic coordination of internal and external resources within the context of human interaction with the world. Conceptual limitations of the first approach are discussed. The notion of functional organs is introduced and applied for identifying the types of abilities associated with efficient integration of artifacts into the structure of human activity.     

Recursion Hypothesis Considered as a Research Program for Cognitive Science

Humans grasp discrete infinities within several cognitive domains, such as in language, thought, social cognition and tool-making. It is sometimes suggested that any such generative ability is based on a computational system processing hierarchical and recursive mental representations. One view concerning such generativity has been that each of the mind’s modules defining a cognitive domain implements its own recursive computational system. In this paper recent evidence to the contrary is reviewed and it is proposed that there is only one supramodal computational system with recursion in the human mind. A recursion thesis is defined, according to which the hominin cognitive evolution is constituted by a recent punctuated genetic mutation that installed the general, supramodal capacity for recursion into the human nervous system on top of the existing, evolutionarily older cognitive structures, and it is argued on the basis of empirical evidence and theoretical considerations that the recursion thesis constitutes a plausible research program for cognitive science.     

Object-oriented knowledge frameworks

This paper introduces a strategy for the construction of object-oriented knowledge frameworks. Global control programs, which are traditionally used for manipulating structured representations, have been replaced by domain-specific resources. This new approach offers increased efficiency and simplified development of knowledge-based expert systems for problem domains that deal with a variety of complex structured information.A theoretical foundation is laid for the representation of knowledge, starting with the adoption of a simple schema for structuring stereotypical information. Data and method abstraction is achieved by installing knowledge frames into part of an object-oriented class system that supports procedural attachment and object communication. This allows frame specialization using domain-specific resources and subsequent construction of modular systems with these specialist frames. Editors are introduced for the alteration of data primitives used in declarative representation. Algorithms, which operate on these data primitives, are given for frame instantiation, data access, and user-directed inference.Examples from structural engineering are used throughout the paper to illustrate the practical application of object-oriented knowledge frameworks.     

A Theorem about Computationalism and “Absolute” Truth

This article focuses on issues related to improving an argument about minds and machines given by Kurt Gödel in 1951, in a prominent lecture. Roughly, Gödel’s argument supported the conjecture that either the human mind is not algorithmic, or there is a particular arithmetical truth impossible for the human mind to master, or both. A well-known weakness in his argument is crucial reliance on the assumption that, if the deductive capability of the human mind is equivalent to that of a formal system, then that system must be consistent. Such a consistency assumption is a strong infallibility assumption about human reasoning, since a formal system having even the slightest inconsistency allows deduction of all statements expressible within the formal system, including all falsehoods expressible within the system. We investigate how that weakness and some of the other problematic aspects of Gödel’s argument can be eliminated or reduced.     

Connectionism and the mind-body problem: exposing the distinction between mind and cognition

Does PDP-style connectionism imply that there are no such things as belief? Ramsey, Stich &; Garson (1991) have argued that it does, but their argument depends on a particular construal of the ontology of beliefs, according to which beliefs are discrete inner causal entities. In this paper I situate their argument within the broader issues of the clash of scientific and manifest images of the world, and the ontological mind-body problem. Their way of understanding belief places them in a long tradition of philosophers who conceive of mind and cognition as the same thing, a tradition that includes people as diverse as Descartes, Fodor, Churchland, and virtually all current cognitive scientists and cognitive neuroscientists. An alternative perspective on the nature of belief was championed by Ryle and is currently exemplified by Dennett's neo-instrumentalism. I argue that PDP-style connectionism, rather than implying that there are no beliefs, implies that the construal of the ontology of belief within the mind-as-cognition framework is mistaken. Beliefs are not discrete inner causal entities. Mind is not ontologically homogeneous; rather, like an economy, it is made up of a diversity of entities of very different ontological kinds interrelated in complex ways. Hence cognitive science is not the science of the mind; it is the science of cognition, which is only one aspect of mind.     

心理认知计算的研究现状及发展趋势

心理认知计算是智能化人机交互技术的一个重要组成部分,近年来得到广泛的关注。文中综述国内外心理认知计算的研究进展。首先介绍心理认知计算的相关概念,详细叙述心理状态理解的研究内容和机制。其次总结心理认知的神经生物学研究成果,对心理情感状态和心理认知状态的研究现状进行了比较,从模式提取和模型建立两方面对心理认知在人机交互中的发展趋势作了分析,提出多模态信息融合的多层级心理状态视觉认知计算模型框架。最后讨论研究心理认知计算的重要意义和当前存在的主要困难。     

Cognitive ergonomics: it's all in the mind

In this paper a distinction is made between classical ergonomics as dealing with the quality of working and cognitive ergonomics as dealing with the quality of work including the joint system products. It is argued that classical ergonomics can be seen as embracing a dualism, where the effects of work on the body are considered separately from the effects of work on the mind. This continues the mechanistic tradition of Western psychology. The aim of cognitive ergonomics is to describe (1) how work affects the mind, as well as (2) how the mind affects work. Work is all in the mind in the sense that the quality of work depends on the person's understanding of the situation (goals, means, constraints) and in the sense that the design of a worksystem depends on the designer's understanding, in particular the conceptualization of the people in the system. In cognitive ergonomics, the reliability of performance—and in particular the reliability of cognition—become central issues. The differences between classical and cognitive ergonomics are illustrated by considering two typical areas: risks at work and human-computer interaction. It is concluded that classical and cognitive ergonomics represent two complementary views of work that must be combined to meet the challenges of present day work environments.     

The interfunctionality of talk and text

Understanding more about how socially distributed cognition operates within a group of writers has implications for the design of technologies to support collaborative writing. This paper presents a chronology of a writing episode in which the communicative practices of collaborating writers and the representations they use to mediate cognition are investigated. The talk generated by the participants discussing how to write an essay provides data for illuminating the group's interactions and is a focus for investigating how this talk becomes metamorphosed into writing. The analysis charts the evolution of a co-authored text through a cycle of activity which is both cognitive and social in orientation and demonstrates the interfunctionality of talk and text for the processes involved in collaborative writing. This suggests that computer systems which support only text-based communication could limit the ways in which talk acts as a mediator for cognition and thus constrain important aspects of collaborative writing.     

Visual tools for business model innovation: Recommendations from a cognitive perspective

Managers involved in business model innovation (BMI) encounter a series of cognitive challenges. Although cognition research provides important insights into how visual tools can reduce cognitive challenges, it does not address the effective design of business model tools. To advance our understanding in this area, this research applies a cognition‐centered perspective to analyze different visual business model representations. It builds upon a systematic literature review that identifies a selection of 45 visual representations from the academic literature and a sample of 50 visualizations from outside the academic realm. A content analysis of the sample reveals that all visual business model representations can be classified into three complementary categories, leading to a novel framework for distinguishing business model understandings. After assigning each visual representation to the framework, we use findings from the cognition literature to derive recommendations on how to select suitable graphic forms for different phases of the BMI process. Thus, this research contributes to the broader understanding of how visual tools can support business model innovation at a cognitive level.     

Static consistency checking of web applications with WebDSL

Modern web application development frameworks provide web application developers with high-level abstractions to improve their productivity. However, their support for static verification of applications is limited. Inconsistencies in an application are often not detected statically, but appear as errors at run-time. The reports about these errors are often obscure and hard to trace back to the source of the inconsistency. A major part of this inadequate consistency checking can be traced back to the lack of linguistic integration of these frameworks. Parts of an application are defined with separate domain-specific languages, which are not checked for consistency with the rest of the application. Examples include regular expressions, query languages and XML-based languages for definition of user interfaces. We give an overview and analysis of typical problems arising in development with frameworks for web application development, with Ruby on Rails, Lift and Seam as representatives.To remedy these problems, in this paper, we argue that domain-specific languages should be designed from the ground up with static verification and cross-aspect consistency checking in mind, providing linguistic integration of domain-specific sub-languages. We show how this approach is applied in the design of WebDSL, a domain-specific language for web applications, by examining how its compiler detects inconsistencies not caught by web frameworks, providing accurate and clear error messages. Furthermore, we show how this consistency analysis can be expressed with a declarative rule-based approach using the Stratego transformation language.     

Minds versus machines: on Saka's basic blindspot theorem

Under the name of ‘Basic Blindspot Theorem’, Paul Saka has proposed in the special issue on mind and paradox of this journal a Gödelian argument to the effect that no cognitive system can be complete and correct. We show that while the argument is successful as regards mechanical and formal systems, it may fail with respect to minds, so contributing to draw a boundary between the former and the latter. The existence of such a boundary may lend support to Saka's general thesis that paradoxes are mind dependent.     

From information processing to dialogical meaning making: an experiential approach to cognitive ergonomics

In this paper, we argue that modelling human action as the execution of predetermined goals and cognition as information processing does not account for peoples experience with emerging technologies, which is as much about values, trust and identity as about executing tasks. We offer a complementary approach to information processing within cognitive ergonomics, which builds on Bruners characterisation of cognition as meaningmaking, and which sees human action as simultaneously creating and executing goals and human cognition as dialogical meaning making. An analysis of field work carried out in two ambulance control centres is employed to exemplify aspects of the creativity and responsivity of work activity that are central to our approach. Finally, in this context, we briefly consider how technological artefacts could be conceptualised as centres of value in an approach to cognitive ergonomics that attempts to accommodate the intellectual, emotional and valuative aspects of work activity.     

Statics and dynamics of cognitive and qualitative matchmaking in task fulfillment

Two main ingredients related to successful task performance are cognition and quality. Supply and demand of these concepts for knowledge intensive tasks are studied in this paper to fuel successful task fulfillment. Cognitive characteristics are supplied by actors performing tasks. Organizational developments such as growing complexity and increasing customer orientation may increase cognitive load. Stakeholders of tasks have quality requirements. These requirements may be affected if actors experience an increase in cognitive load. It is observed that knowledge intensive tasks demand cognitive characteristics and supply quality factors. Actors supply cognition and stakeholders demand quality. The gap between supply and demand can be bridged by introducing several models. These models consist of a matchmaking framework, conceptual models, and dynamic models. The matchmaking framework shows how supply and demand of cognitive characteristics or quality factors can be matched. Relations and roles of the concepts involved in task fulfillment are mapped out by the conceptual models. The dynamic models show causes that have effects on the supply of cognitive characteristics and the level of quality. These insights in the relations and dependencies between cognition and quality increase our understanding of the key concepts for successful task fulfillment.     

The brain in your pocket: Evidence that Smartphones are used to supplant thinking

With the advent of Smartphone technology, access to the internet and its associated knowledge base is at one’s fingertips. What consequences does this have for human cognition? We frame Smartphone use as an instantiation of the extended mind—the notion that our cognition goes beyond our brains—and in so doing, characterize a modern form of cognitive miserliness. Specifically, that people typically forego effortful analytic thinking in lieu of fast and easy intuition suggests that individuals may allow their Smartphones to do their thinking for them. Our account predicts that individuals who are relatively less willing and/or able to engage effortful reasoning processes may compensate by relying on the internet through their Smartphones. Across three studies, we find that those who think more intuitively and less analytically when given reasoning problems were more likely to rely on their Smartphones (i.e., extended mind) for information in their everyday lives. There was no such association with the amount of time using the Smartphone for social media and entertainment purposes, nor did boredom proneness qualify any of our results. These findings demonstrate that people may offload thinking to technology, which in turn demands that psychological science understand the meshing of mind and media to adequately characterize human experience and cognition in the modern era.     

From versatility to auto-adaptation of the medium access control in wireless sensor networks

Recent deployments of wireless sensor networks have targeted challenging monitoring and surveillance applications. The medium access control being the main source of energy wastage, energy-efficiency has always been kept in mind while designing the communication stack embedded in spread sensors. Especially, versatile protocols have emerged to offer a suitable solution over multiple deployment characteristics. In this study, we observe to what extent versatility applies to dynamic scenarios in which communications do not respect specific communication paradigms. We first provide a performance evaluation of two well-reputed versatile protocols (B-MAC (Polastre et al., 2004 [17]) and X-MAC (Buettner et al., 2006 [4])) under the conditions of such a scenario. The obtained results convinced us to propose more than versatility and pre-configured solutions, that is auto-adaptation. We then introduce the main contribution of this paper, an auto-adaptive algorithm that allows one to adjust the previously mentioned protocols while the network is operating. We analyze to what extent it outperforms the previously obtained results.     

Supporting problem-solving performance in a hypermedia learning environment: The role of students’ prior knowledge and metacognitive skills

This study investigated how students with different prior knowledge and metacognitive skills benefited from continuous and faded domain-general and domain-specific scaffolds. Students’ scores on a multiple-choice pretest, inventory of metacognitive self-regulation, and solution forms were analyzed. Results indicated that while students with lower regulation of cognition and objectivity benefited more from the domain-general scaffolds than the domain-specific ones, students with lower prior knowledge, knowledge of cognition, and problem representation took advantage of both domain-general and domain-specific conditions. Moreover, while students with lower prior knowledge, regulation of cognition, and problem representation took advantage of both continuous and faded domain-general scaffolds, students with lower knowledge of cognition and objectivity benefited more from the domain-general continuous conditions. In addition, students with lower prior knowledge, knowledge of cognition, and objectivity might have difficulties when the domain-specific conditions are faded. On the other hand, results of the study suggested that scaffolds did not substantially benefit the students with higher prior knowledge and higher metacognitive skills.     

Versatile,scalable, and accurate simulation of distributed applications and platforms

The study of parallel and distributed applications and platforms, whether in the cluster, grid, peer-to-peer, volunteer, or cloud computing domain, often mandates empirical evaluation of proposed algorithmic and system solutions via simulation. Unlike direct experimentation via an application deployment on a real-world testbed, simulation enables fully repeatable and configurable experiments for arbitrary hypothetical scenarios. Two key concerns are accuracy (so that simulation results are scientifically sound) and scalability (so that simulation experiments can be fast and memory-efficient). While the scalability of a simulator is easily measured, the accuracy of many state-of-the-art simulators is largely unknown because they have not been sufficiently validated. In this work we describe recent accuracy and scalability advances made in the context of the SimGrid simulation framework. A design goal of SimGrid is that it should be versatile, i.e., applicable across all aforementioned domains. We present quantitative results that show that SimGrid compares favorably with state-of-the-art domain-specific simulators in terms of scalability, accuracy, or the trade-off between the two. An important implication is that, contrary to popular wisdom, striving for versatility in a simulator is not an impediment but instead is conducive to improving both accuracy and scalability.     

Virtual Symposium on Virtual Mind

When certain formal symbol systems (e.g., computer programs) are implemented as dynamic physical symbol systems (e.g., when they are run on a computer) their activity can be interpreted at higher levels (e.g., binary code can be interpreted as LISP, LISP code can be interpreted as English, and English can be interpreted as a meaninguful conversation). These higher levels of interpretability are called ‘virtual’ systems. If such a virtual system is interpretable as if it had a mind, is such a ‘virtual mind’ real? This is the question addressed in this ‘virtual’ symposium, originally conducted electronically among four cognitive scientists. Donald Perlis, a computer scientist, argues that according to the computationalist thesis, virtual minds are real and hence Searle's Chinese Room Argument fails, because if Searle memorized and executed a program that could pass the Turing Test in Chinese he would have a second, virtual, Chinese-understanding mind of which he was unaware (as in multiple personality). Stevan Harnad, a psychologist, argues that Searle's Argument is valid, virtual minds are just hermeneutic overinterpretations, and symbols must be grounded in the real world of objects, not just the virtual world of interpretations. Computer scientist Patrick Hayes argues that Searle's Argument fails, but because Searle does not really implement the program: a real implementation must not be homuncular but mindless and mechanical, like a computer. Only then can it give rise to a mind at the virtual level. Philosopher Ned Block suggests that there is no reason a mindful implementation would not be a real one.     

A Visual Information Processing Model to Characterize Interactive Visualization Environments

Interactive visualizations have the potential to greatly enhance our ability to analyze data. Although the user is central to the use of such environments, perceptual and cognitive processes are not well understood within the context of interactive visualization. Although cognitive psychology has provided a greater understanding of visual perception and cognition, a theoretical framework that links this knowledge with the interactive visualization process is needed. This article aims to fill this gap by introducing a visual information processing model that facilitates the understanding of how users interact with interactive visualization environments.