When teaching a novel mathematical concept, should we present learners with abstract or concrete examples? In this experiment, we conduct a critical replication and extension of a well‐known study that argued for the general advantage of abstract examples (Kaminski, Sloutsky, & Heckler, 2008a). We demonstrate that theoretically motivated yet minor modifications of the learning design put this argument in question. A key finding from this study is that participants who trained with improved concrete examples performed as well as, or better (...) than, participants who trained with abstract examples. We argue that the previously reported “advantage of abstract examples” manifested not because abstract examples are advantageous in general, but because the concrete condition employed suboptimal examples. (shrink)

I introduce the special issue by: (1) outlining something of the relationship between mainstream cognitive science and the study of nonhuman primate cognition; (2) providing a brief overview of the scientific study of primate cognition and how the papers of this special issue fit into that scientific paradigm; and (3) explicating my own views about the relationship between nonhuman primate cognition and human cognition.

J.L. Austin has demonstrated that people can do things—bring about social facts — with words. Here we describe how some people do things with things. This is a study of the symbolic use and situated history of material objects during a business negotiation between two German entrepreneurs: of the practical transformation of things-at-hand from objects of use into exemplars, or into forms-at-hand that can be used for the construction of transitory symbolic artifacts. Arranging boxes in a particular fashion can be (...) the equivalent of an illocutionary act, but unlike words things remain on the scene as indexical monuments to prior interactional arrangements. (shrink)

In this paper recent research involving interdisciplinary ethnography is presented as an exploration of its contribution to studies of people and technology in the workplace. Three main patterns of interaction between ethnography and ‘the others’ are examined. First, the influence of ethnography in promoting people-oriented perspectives of technology is discussed with reference to workplace studies in manufacturing. Second, ethnography contribution to the development of hybrid methods for the design and implementation of technology for use in the workplace is illustrated by (...) several examples of such frameworks. Third, the influence of ethnographic research to providing a theoretical basis for computer-mediated communication is explored and documented by analyses of design teams working together as part of construction projects. From a practical point of view, this exploration has resulted in a brief discussion of the broad range of ‘users’ in the real-life workplace who benefit from ethnographic research. Future work in this area will rely on a reflexive stance on the part of the ethnographer in relation to both users of technology and users of ethnography. (shrink)

Simon’s notion of bounded rationality is deeply intertwined with his activity as a cognitive psychologist and founder of so-called cognitivism, a mainstream approach in cognitive psychology until the 1980s. Cognitivism, understood as ‘symbolic information processing,’ provided the first cognitive psychology foundation to bounded rationality. Has bounded rationality since then fully followed the development of cognitive psychology beyond symbolic information processing in the post-Simonian era? To answer this question, this paper focuses on Simon’s opposition during the 1990s to a new view (...) of cognition called situated cognition, which has since put into question the entire view in cognitive psychology of humans as symbolic information processors. This paper then reads the cognitivism/situated cognition debate through the lens of current bounded rationality research in economics, in order to inquire into whether it has tackled the issues in that controversy; to envisage possible new foundations for a cognitive psychology-based bounded rationality. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

The aim of the paper is to outline the basic theoretical reasons for applying the concept of extended mind to literacy theory. In order to explicate theoretical difficulties faced by literacy theory, one needs to take into account the debate regarding technological determinism. Using this debate as an example, one can observe two basic strategies applied to defining the concept of a medium. On the one hand, there exists a strategy to formulate a narrow definition of a medium in terms (...) of material artifacts. On the other hand, one can observe a strategy which relies on creating a wide definition of a medium. According to this definition, a medium is understood as a social institution which denotes a particular way of behaving and thinking. The paper aims at justifying the hypothesis that both interpretational strategies employed in defining a medium and the related concept of technology are inaccurate in certain important respects. If the argumentation presented here proves correct, literacy theory will be faced with a serious dilemma: a choice between two equally unsuitable definitions of technology/media. However, the theoretical dilemma pertaining to the question of media can be elucidated by appealing to the conceptual framework of the extended mind hypothesis. (shrink)