DCOG (Hutchins & Klausen)

  1. Contrast to classical cognitive science view:
    “Classical cognitive science approach can be applied with little modification to a unit of analysis that is larger than a person.” (page 266)
    The net effect is that socio-technical systems may have cognitive properties that cannot be reduced to the cognitive properties of individual persons. As an example is analyzed how the cockpit (pilots + dashboard) of a commercial airline computes and remembers the relationship between airspeed and wing configuration.
    “The new thing in this approach is that if the unit of analysis is a single individual, cognitive scientists can only infer internal states of the actor from external behaviors, while with larger systems it is possible to directly observe some of the internal states of the system (i.e. the dashboard).”
    (From “How the cockpit remembers its speed” Hutchins, CSJ)
  2. Example of Classroom: chalkboard, notes, papers, slides …
  3. Finding the right representation, organization, …
  4. Contrast to other views of Intersubjectivity:
  5. Internal Representational view (equivalent mental reps of general knowledge or specific situation)
  6. CA view (look at procedure, interaction, … as a production not a product)
  7. Common ground

Hutchins, E. and Klausen, T. (1992) Distributed cognition in an airline cockpit. In Middleton, D. and Engestrom, Y. (eds), Communication and Cognition at Work. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 15-34.

  1. (p. 16-17) “It is the performance of that system, not the skills of any individual pilot, that determines whether you live or die. In order to understand the performance of the cockpit as a system we need, of course, to refer to the cognitive properties of the individual pilots, but we also need a new, larger, unit of cognitive analysis. This unit of analysis must permit us to describe and explain the cognitive properties of the cockpit system that is composed of the pilots and their information environment. We call this unit of analysis a system of distributed cognition.”
  2. Method of analysis
  3. Video and audio records.
  4. Written transcript
  5. Description of actions (culturally meaningful chunks)
  6. Interpretations
  7. Brief summary of what was seen:
    As the crew approached the altitude to which they were cleared, the Captain called Air Traffic Control and asked for a clearance to a higher altitude. The controller handed them off to a high-altitude controller who gave them a clearance to their cruising altitude and instructed them to expedite the climb. The Second Officer increased the thrust and they continued their climb.
  8. Cognitive labor is socially distributed. (p. 19)
  9. Planning (p. 20)
  10. The trajectories of information (p. 21)
  11. Formation of expectations (p. 21) (read page 22)
  12. Intersubjectivity as a basis for communication (p.22-24)
  13. Distribution of information storage (p. 25)
  14. Redundant readbacks for error checking (p. 25-26)
  15. Propagation of representational state through the system
    (p. 26-27)
  16. Distribution of labor again (p27-28)
  17. Memory in the sgtate of artifacts: The altitude-alert system (p. 28-29)
  18. Computation by propagation and transformation of representational state: Computing and using the maximum EPR’s (p. 29-30)
  19. Intersubjectivity and distribution of storage again (p. 30)
  20. Firewall Thrust! (p.31)