52
G. Riva, M.T. Anguera, B.K. Wiederhold and F. Mantovani (Eds.)
From Communication to Presence: Cognition, Emotions and Culture towards the
Ultimate Communicative Experience. Festschrift in honor of Luigi Anolli
IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2006, (c) All rights reserved - http://www.emergingcommunication.com
possible, because the inside/outside relationship between subject and environment is
replaced by a part/whole relationship [18]. As noted by Clancey [19]:
“Situated activity is not a kind of action, but the nature of animal interaction at all
times, in contrast with most machines we know. This is not merely a claim that
context is important, but what constitutes the context, how you categorize the world,
arises together with processes that are coordinating physical activity. To be
perceiving the world is to be acting in it - not in a linear input-output relation
(act>observe>change) -but dialectically, so that what I am perceiving and how I am
moving co-determine each other.” (p. 88).
The final outcome of this view is that action is highly dependent upon its material
and social circumstances. As noted by Norman [20], any activity is “intrinsically”
connected to the particular setting in which the subject acts. Its course is influenced
by the physical, social and cultural space (context) in which it happens (situation).
In particular it depends on the natural and contextual characteristics (affordances
and constrains) of the situation. It is important to note that the characteristics of the
situation may be perceived or not by the subject. For the action of the subject, the
only relevant characteristics are the ones he/she is able to identify.
Strictly related to this approach is the one of Distributed Cognition. As for
Situated Cognition, the analysis is moved from the subject to the his/her relationship
with the environment [18]. However, it focuses mainly on three kinds of distributed
cognitive processes:
- Social processes: across the members of a social group;
- Processes related to material environment: across internal and external (material
or environmental) structures;
- Distributed cognition in time: how the products of earlier events can transform
the nature of later events.
3.3.1.2 Embodied Cognition
Within the paradigm of Embedded Cognition, the Embodied Cognition approach
underlines the central role of body in shaping the mind [10, 21-26]. Specifically, the
mind has to be understood in the context of its relationship to a physical body that
interacts with the world. Hence human cognition, rather than being centralized,
abstract, and sharply distinct from peripheral input and output modules, has instead
deep roots in sensorimotor processing.
Although this broad claim is enjoying increasingly support, there is in fact a great
deal of diversity in the subclaims involved and the degree of controversy they attract.
Wilson [27] recently identified six different definitions of Embodied Cognition, of
which, however, only one explicitly addresses the role of the body (p. 626):
1. Cognition is situated. As in Situated and Distributed Cognition, the cognitive
activity takes place in the context of a real-world environment;
2. Cognition is time pressured. As in Situated Cognition, the cognitive activity is
constrained by the pressures of real-time interaction with the environment;
3. We off-load cognitive work onto the environment. As in Distributed Cognition,
the limits in our information-processing abilities (e.g., limits on working
memory) forces us in exploiting the environment to reduce the cognitive