Abstract
In this chapter , we propose a systemic model of thinking (SysTM) to account for higher cognitive operations such as how an agent makes inferences, solves problems and makes decisions. The SysTM model conceives thinking as a cognitive process that evolves in time and space and results in a new cognitive event (i.e., a new solution to a problem). This presupposes that such cognitive events are emerging from cognitive interactivity, which we define as the meshed network of reciprocal causations between an agent’s mental processing and the transformative actions she applies to her immediate environment to achieve a cognitive result. To explain how cognitive interactivity results in cognitive events, SysTM builds upon the classical information processing model but breaks from the view that cognitive events result from a linear information processing path originating in the perception of a problem stimulus that is mentally processed to produce a cognitive event. Instead, SysTM holds that information processing in thinking evolves through a succession of deductive and inductive processing loops. Both loops give rise to transformative actions on the physical information layout, resulting in new perceptual inputs which inform the next processing loop. Such actions result from the enaction of mental action plans in deductive loops and from unplanned direct perception of action possibilities or affordances in inductive loops. To account for direct perception, we introduce the concept of an affordance pool to refer to a short term memory storage of action possibilities in working memory . We conclude by illustrating how SysTM can be used to derive new predictions and guide the study of cognitive interactivity in thinking.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
A similar effect could be achieved through sub-vocalizing a string of articulatory moves. While this would be an instance of agentive activity, we would expect its ephemeral result to only offer a limited offloading support.
- 2.
As such, our use of the term ‘systemic thinking’ bears no conceptual resemblance to the term “systems thinking” coined by Senge (1991) in reference to the need of a shared vision and a focus on team learning to foster organizational transformation.
References
Baber, C., Cengiz, T. G., & Parekh, M. (2014). Tool use as distributed cognition: How tools help, hinder and define manual skill. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1–14. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00116.
Baddeley, A. (1996). Exploring the central executive. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A, 49, 5–28. doi:10.1080/713755608.
Baddeley, A. (2012). Working memory: Theories, models, and controversies. Annual Review of Psychology, 63, 1–29. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100422.
Baddeley, A. D. (1966). Short-term memory for word sequences as a function of acoustic, semantic and formal similarity. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18, 362–365. doi:10.1080/14640746608400055.
Baddeley, A. D., Thomson, N., & Buchanan, M. (1975). Word length and the structure of short-term memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 14, 575–589. doi:10.1016/S0022-5371(75)80045-4.
Bartlett, F. C. (1995). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology (2nd ed.). Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press (Original work published 1932).
Brighton, H., & Todd, P. M. (2009). Situating rationality: Ecologically rational decision making with simple heuristics. In P. Robbins & M. Aydede (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of situated cognition (pp. 322–346). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Broadbent, D. E. (1957). A mechanical model for human attention and immediate memory. Psychological Review, 64, 205.
Craik, K. J. W. (1948). Theory of the human operator in control systems: II. Man as an element in a control system. British Journal of Psychology: General Section, 38, 142–148. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.1948.tb01149.x.
Davidson, J. E. (1995). The suddenness of insight. In R. J. Sternberg & J. E. Davidson (Eds.), The nature of insight (pp. 125–155). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Ericsson, K. A., & Kintsch, W. (1995). Long-term working memory. Psychological Review, 102, 211–245.
Fioratou, E., & Cowley, S. J. (2009). Insightful thinking: Cognitive dynamics and material artifacts. Pragmatics & Cognition, 17, 549–572. doi:10.1075/pc.17.3.04fio.
Fleck, J. I., & Weisberg, R. W. (2013). Insight versus analysis: Evidence for diverse methods in problem solving. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25, 436–463. doi:10.1080/20445911.2013.779248.
Fleming, M., & Maglio, P. P. (2015). How physical interaction helps performance in a scrabble-like task. In D. C. Noelle, R. Dale, A. S. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. P. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 716–721). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Fodor, J. A., & Pylyshyn, Z. W. (1981). How direct is visual perception?: Some reflections on Gibson’s “ecological approach”. Cognition, 9, 139–196. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(81)90009-3.
Frederick, S. (2005). Cognitive reflection and decision making. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19, 25–42.
Fürst, A. J., & Hitch, G. J. (2000). Separate roles for executive and phonological components of working memory in mental arithmetic. Memory & Cognition, 28, 774–782.
Gibson, J. J. (1977). The theory of affordances. In R. Shaw & J. Bransford (Eds.), Perceiving, acting, and knowing: Toward an ecological psychology (pp. 67–82). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Gibson, J. J. (1986). The ecological approach to visual perception. Hillsdale, NJ (Original work published 1979): Erlbaum.
Gigerenzer, G., & Hoffrage, U. (1995). How to improve Bayesian reasoning without instruction: Frequency formats. Psychological Review, 102, 684–704. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.102.4.684
Goldin-Meadow, S. (1999). The role of gesture in communication and thinking. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3, 419–429. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(99)01397-2.
Goldin-Meadow, S., Nusbaum, H., Kelly, S. D., & Wagner, S. (2001). Explaining math: Gesturing lightens the load. Psychological Science, 12, 516–522. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00395.
Greeno, J. G. (1994). Gibson’s affordances. Psychological Review, 101, 336–342. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.101.2.336.
Guthrie, L. G., Vallée-Tourangeau, F., Vallée-Tourangeau, G., & Howard, C. (2015). Learning and interactivity in solving a transformation problem. Memory & Cognition, 43, 723–735. doi:10.3758/s13421-015-0504-8.
Gyr, J. W. (1972). Is a theory of direct visual perception adequate? Psychological Bulletin, 77, 246.
Hecht, S. A. (2002). Counting on working memory in simple arithmetic when counting is used for problem solving. Memory & Cognition, 30, 447–455. doi:10.3758/BF03194945.
Hertwig, R., Barron, G., Weber, E. U., & Erev, I. (2004). Decisions from experience and the effect of rare events in risky choice. Psychological Science, 15, 534–539. doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00715.x.
Hertwig, R., & Erev, I. (2009). The description–experience gap in risky choice. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13, 517–523. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2009.09.004.
Hollan, J., Hutchins, E., & Kirsh, D. (2000). Distributed cognition: Toward a new foundation for human-computer interaction research. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 7, 174–196.
Hurley, S. (2001). Perception and action: Alternative views. Synthese, 129, 3–40.
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cultural cognition. Cognition in the wild (pp. 353–374). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Hutchins, E. (2001). Cognition, Distributed. In N. J. Smelser & P. B. Baltes (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (pp. 2068–2072). Oxford: Pergamon. doi:10.1016/B0-08-043076-7/01636-3.
Ingold, T. (2010). The textility of making. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 34, 91–102. doi:10.1093/cje/bep042.
Inhelder, B., & Piaget, J. (2013). The growth of logical thinking from childhood to adolescence: An essay on the construction of formal operational structures. Abington, UK: Routledge (Original work published 1958).
Kahneman, D. (2012). Thinking, fast and slow. London: Penguin Books.
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47, 263–292.
Kane, M. J., Hambrick, D. Z., & Conway, A. R. A. (2005). Working memory capacity and fluid intelligence are strongly related constructs: Comment on Ackerman, Beier, and Boyle (2005). Psychological Bulletin, 131, 66–71. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.131.1.66.
Kirsh, D. (2010). Thinking with external representations. AI & Society, 25, 441–454. doi:10.1007/s00146-010-0272-8.
Kirsh, D., & Maglio, P. (1994). On distinguishing epistemic from pragmatic action. Cognitive Science, 18, 513–549.
Knappett, C. (2005). Thinking through material culture: An interdisciplinary perspective. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Kool, W., McGuire, J. T., Rosen, Z. B., & Botvinick, M. M. (2010). Decision making and the avoidance of cognitive demand. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 139, 665–682. doi:10.1037/a0020198.
Maglio, P., Matlock, T., Raphaely, D., Chernicky, B., & Kirsh, D. (1999). Interactive skill in scrabble. In Proceedings of the Twenty-First Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 326–330).
Malafouris, L. (2013). How things shape the mind: A theory of material engagement. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Metcalfe, J., & Wiebe, D. (1987). Intuition in insight and noninsight problem solving. Memory & Cognition, 15, 238–246. doi:10.3758/BF03197722.
Miller, G. A. (2003). The cognitive revolution: a historical perspective. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 141–144. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00029-9.
Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Rettinger, D. A., Shah, P., & Hegarty, M. (2001). How are visuospatial working memory, executive functioning, and spatial abilities related? A latent-variable analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 621–640. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.130.4.621.
Norman, J. (2002). Two visual systems and two theories of perception: An attempt to reconcile the constructivist and ecological approaches. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25(01), 73–96.
Norman, D. A. (2013). The design of everyday things (2nd ed.). New York: Basic Books.
Novack, M., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2015). Learning from gesture: How our hands change our minds. Educational Psychology Review, 27, 405–412. doi:10.1007/s10648-015-9325-3.
Ohlsson, S. (2011). Deep learning: How the mind overrides experience. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rauscher, F. H., Krauss, R. M., & Chen, Y. (1996). Gesture, speech, and lexical access: The role of lexical movements in speech production. Psychological Science, 7, 226–231. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb00364.x.
Salamé, P., & Baddeley, A. (1986). Phonological factors in STM: Similarity and the unattended speech effect. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 24, 263–265.
Shapiro, L. (2011). Embodied cognition. New York: Routledge.
Skinner, B. F. (1935). Two types of conditioned reflex and a pseudo type. The Journal of General Psychology, 12, 66–77. doi:10.1080/00221309.1935.9920088.
Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (1999). Discrepancies between normative and descriptive models of decision making and the understanding/acceptance principle. Cognitive Psychology, 38, 349–385. doi:10.1006/cogp.1998.0700.
Senge, P. (1991). The art and practice of the fifth discipline. London: Century.
Steffensen, S. V. (2013). Human interactivity: Problem-solving, solution-probing and verbal patterns in the wild. In S. Cowley & F. Vallée-Tourangeau (Eds.), Cognition beyond the brain: Computation, interactivity and human artifice (pp. 195–221). Dordrecht: Springer.
Steffensen, S. V., Vallée-Tourangeau, F., & Vallée-Tourangeau, G. (2016). Cognitive events in a problem-solving task: a qualitative method for investigating interactivity in the 17 Animals problem. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 28, 79–105. doi:10.1080/20445911.2015.1095193.
Tolman, E. C. (1932). Purposive behavior in animals and men. New York: Century.
Tolman, E. C. (1948). Cognitive maps in rats and men. Psychological Review, 55, 189–208.
Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (2013). Interactivity, efficiency, and individual differences in mental arithmetic. Experimental Psychology, 60, 302–311. doi:10.1027/1618-3169/a000200.
Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (2014). Insight, interactivity and materiality. Pragmatics & Cognition, 22(1), 27–44. doi:10.1075/pc.22.1.02val.
Vallée-Tourangeau, F., Sirota, M., & Vallée-Tourangeau, G. (2016). Interactivity mitigates the impact of working memory depletion on mental arithmetic performance. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 1, 26. doi:10.1186/s41235-016-0027-2.
Vallée-Tourangeau, F., Steffensen, S, V., Vallée-Tourangeau, G., & Makri, A. (2015a). Insight and cognitive ecosystems. In D. C. Noelle, R. Dale, A. S. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. P. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2457–2462). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Vallée-Tourangeau, G., Abadie, M., & Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (2015b). Interactivity fosters Bayesian reasoning without instruction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144, 581–603. doi:10.1037/a0039161.
Vallée-Tourangeau, F., Steffensen, S. V., Vallée-Tourangeau, G., & Sirota, M. (2016). Insight with hands and things. Acta Psychologica, 170, 195–205. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2016.08.006
Vallée-Tourangeau, F., & Wrightman, M. (2010). Interactive skills and individual differences in a word production task. AI & Society, 25, 433–439. doi:10.1007/s00146-010-0270-x.
Vallée-Tourangeau, G., & Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (2014). The spatio-temporal dynamics of systemic thinking. Cybernetics & Human Knowing, 21, 113–127.
Wagenaar, W. A., Keren, G., & Lichtenstein, S. (1988). Islanders and hostages: Deep and surface structures of decision problems. Acta Psychologica, 67, 175–189. doi:10.1016/0001-6918(88)90012-1.
Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review, 20, 158. doi:10.1037/h0074428.
Weber, M. (1978). Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press (Original work published 1922).
Weisberg, R. W. (2015). Toward an integrated theory of insight in problem solving. Thinking & Reasoning, 21, 5–39. doi:10.1080/13546783.2014.886625.
Weller, A., Villejoubert, G., & Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (2011). Interactive insight problem solving. Thinking & Reasoning, 17, 424–439. doi:10.1080/13546783.2011.629081.
Wickens, C. D., & Carswell, C. M. (2012). Information processing. In G. Salvendi (Ed.), Handbook of human factors and ergonomics (4th ed., pp. 117–161). New York: Wiley.
Wilson, A. D., & Golonka, S. (2013). Embodied cognition is not what you think it is. Frontiers in Psychology, 4. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00058.
Wynn, T., & Coolidge, F. L. (2014). Technical cognition, working memory and creativity. Pragmatics & Cognition, 22, 45–63. doi:10.1075/pc.22.1.03wyn.
Withagen, R., & Chemero, A. (2012). Affordances and classification: On the significance of a sidebar in James Gibson’s last book. Philosophical Psychology, 25, 521–537. doi:10.1080/09515089.2011.579424.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Vallée-Tourangeau, G., Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (2017). Cognition Beyond the Classical Information Processing Model: Cognitive Interactivity and the Systemic Thinking Model (SysTM). In: Cowley, S., Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (eds) Cognition Beyond the Brain. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49115-8_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49115-8_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-49114-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-49115-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)