Cognitive Artifacts and Their Virtues in Scientific Practice

This paper proposes a novel way to understand various kinds of scientific representations in terms of cognitive artifacts. It introduces a novel functional taxonomy of cognitive artifacts prevalent in scientific practice, which covers a huge diversity of their formats, vehicles, and functions. It is argued that toolboxes, conceptual frameworks, theories, models, and individual hypotheses can be understood as supporting our cognitive performance in scientific practice. While all these entities are external representations, their function can be best understood through the conceptual lens of wide cognition. The functional approach suggests that the assessment of knowledge representation in science should be based on functions that cognitive artifacts help us perform. By providing a conceptual link between the functionality of artifacts and their virtues, this approach also recommends an empirical approach to the study of virtues. This implies that the cognitive approach to the study of science can offer some guidance in recent philosophical debates around the nature of scientific theories or models

Learning the causes of the seasons with gesture-augmented simulations

There has been recent interest in how the body can be used as a resource for learning challenging concepts in science and mathematics. This dissertation contributes to this conversation in the literature by focusing on a learning environment that engages students in using their bodies as a resource for learning a particularly challenging science concept, the causes of the seasons. The causes of the seasons is widely recognized as an important topic in science education, and accordingly the topic has been the focus of much research over the last several decades. This research has yielded information about common alternative conceptions that children have about the topic. And yet even with a number of interventions targeted at supporting student learning of the causes of the seasons, it has remained a challenging topic. Previous interventions have been designed and analyzed using constructivism as a theoretical lens. This dissertation follows this practice by using constructivism as a theoretical lens, while making a new contribution by also using the theoretical lens of embodied cognition. This dissertation utilizes these theories by exploring how middle school students learn the causes of the seasons in the context of their science classes by engaging with a learning environment that includes a computer simulation controlled with hand gestures, which I refer to as a gesture-augmented simulation. In this dissertation, learning is considered to occur when students develop more scientifically accurate conceptual models of seasonal change. Students’ conceptual models were probed in various ways, including analysis of responses to multiple choice questions, explanations provided in written and verbal formats, and also by analyzing gestures that were produced while providing explanations. By using a mixed methods approach, this dissertation examined the learning process and outcomes of the use of a gesture-augmented simulation. Based on pre-test to post-test comparisons, conceptual understanding of the causes of the seasons increased overall for participants, but these improvements were not uniform for all students. When looking more closely at the explanations of focal students, this study also found that there were increases in the amount and complexity of student gesturing while explaining causes of the seasons after using the simulation. Related to the learning process, this study identified patterns of using the simulation in ways that were productive for focal students to improve their conceptual understanding of causes of the seasons. Specifically, students’ repeated use of discussion prompts was related to improvement and convergence on probes of student thinking. These findings suggest that the embodied learning environment used in the study, a gesture-augmented simulation, was productive for helping students improve their conceptual understanding of the causes of the seasons when used in particular ways during their science class. Future research should continue to explore the design of scaffolds to support productive uses of gesture-augmented simulations by providing dynamic guidance to students as well as the design of dashboards that could provide relevant information to teachers while facilitating lessons

GESTURE MAHASISWA SELAMA PROSES DISKUSI DALAM MEMPERBAIKI KESALAHAN KONSEP PEMECAHAN MASALAH KALKULUS

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh gesture mahasiswa selama proses diskusi dalam memperbaiki kesalahan konsep pemecahan masalah kalkulus serta untuk mengkaji jenis-jenis geture yang mereka digunakan untuk memperbaiki kesalahan konsep tersebut. Penelitian ini termasuk penelitian kualitatif dengan jenis deskriptif. Data yang diperoleh dideskripsikan berdasarkan keadaan yang sebenarnya selanjutnya dilakukan analisis data secara induktif dan dilakukan pencocokan dengan teori yang ada sehingga diperoleh karakteristik variasi gesture yang digunakan mahasiswa dan peranan gesture dalam memperbaiki kesalahan konsep matematika.  Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa gesture yang digunakan oleh mahasiswa berkemampuan tinggi selama proses diskusi dapat memperbaiki kesalahan konsep pemecahan masalah kalkulus yang dilakukan oleh mahasiswa berkemampuan sedang dan rendah. Jenis-jenis gesture yang digunakan oleh mahasiswa berkemampuan tinggi dalam memperbaiki kesalahan konsep mahasiswa berkemampuan sedang dan rendah selama proses diskusi antara lain adalah: gesture menunjuk, gesture menulis, dan gesture representasional. Ketiga jenis gesture ini dapat membuat mahasiswa yang berkemampuan sedang dan rendah lebih mudah memahami bahasa dan informasi yang disampaikan

Simulating activities: Relating motives, deliberation, and attentive coordination

Activities are located behaviors, taking time, conceived as socially meaningful, and usually involving interaction with tools and the environment. In modeling human cognition as a form of problem solving (goal-directed search and operator sequencing), cognitive science researchers have not adequately studied “off-task” activities (e.g., waiting), non-intellectual motives (e.g., hunger), sustaining a goal state (e.g., playful interaction), and coupled perceptual-motor dynamics (e.g., following someone). These aspects of human behavior have been considered in bits and pieces in past research, identified as scripts, human factors, behavior settings, ensemble, flow experience, and situated action. More broadly, activity theory provides a comprehensive framework relating motives, goals, and operations. This paper ties these ideas together, using examples from work life in a Canadian High Arctic research station. The emphasis is on simulating human behavior as it naturally occurs, such that “working” is understood as an aspect of living. The result is a synthesis of previously unrelated analytic perspectives and a broader appreciation of the nature of human cognition. Simulating activities in this comprehensive way is useful for understanding work practice, promoting learning, and designing better tools, including human-robot systems

Students learning science: Representation construction in a digital environment

This thesis showed the viable digital delivery for a representation-focused approach for teaching science. This study has led to guidelines for a generative digital design and sequencing of representational tasks and resources. It has also illustrated students’ collaborative reasoning processes during a problem-solving task, reflective of an authentic scientific inquiry

Cognitive modeling of social behaviors

To understand both individual cognition and collective activity, perhaps the greatest opportunity today is to integrate the cognitive modeling approach (which stresses how beliefs are formed and drive behavior) with social studies (which stress how relationships and informal practices drive behavior). The crucial insight is that norms are conceptualized in the individual mind as ways of carrying out activities. This requires for the psychologist a shift from only modeling goals and tasks —why people do what they do—to modeling behavioral patterns—what people do—as they are engaged in purposeful activities. Instead of a model that exclusively deduces actions from goals, behaviors are also, if not primarily, driven by broader patterns of chronological and located activities (akin to scripts). To illustrate these ideas, this article presents an extract from a Brahms simulation of the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS), in which a crew of six people are living and working for a week, physically simulating a Mars surface mission. The example focuses on the simulation of a planning meeting, showing how physiological constraints (e.g., hunger, fatigue), facilities (e.g., the habitat’s layout) and group decision making interact. Methods are described for constructing such a model of practice, from video and first-hand observation, and how this modeling approach changes how one relates goals, knowledge, and cognitive architecture. The resulting simulation model is a powerful complement to task analysis and knowledge-based simulations of reasoning, with many practical applications for work system design, operations management, and training

Brain Signatures of Embodied Semantics and Language: A Consensus Paper

According to embodied theories (including embodied, embedded, extended, enacted, situated, and grounded approaches to cognition), language representation is intrinsically linked to our interactions with the world around us, which is reflected in specific brain signatures during language processing and learning. Moving on from the original rivalry of embodied vs. amodal theories, this consensus paper addresses a series of carefully selected questions that aim at determining when and how rather than whether motor and perceptual processes are involved in language processes. We cover a wide range of research areas, from the neurophysiological signatures of embodied semantics, e.g., event-related potentials and fields as well as neural oscillations, to semantic processing and semantic priming effects on concrete and abstract words, to first and second language learning and, finally, the use of virtual reality for examining embodied semantics. Our common aim is to better understand the role of motor and perceptual processes in language representation as indexed by language comprehension and learning. We come to the consensus that, based on seminal research conducted in the field, future directions now call for enhancing the external validity of findings by acknowledging the multimodality, multidimensionality, flexibility and idiosyncrasy of embodied and situated language and semantic processes