I have Chuck's reply to Ania, but not Ania's initial question to
chuck about his use of the term, "cognitive practices." Chuck wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Ania,
"Cognitive Practice" was a term I invoked, but I do not believe
Mike uses in this chapter (although he does have an extended discussion of
practice and activity in chapter 5.) In Chapter 8 Mike uses "cognitive
tasks" and "cognitive processes." I invoked the term cognitive practice
not to distinguish it from physiological--of course both internal "nervous
system events" and external "limb and voice events" are physiological.
What I wanted to characterize were those activities Mike examines, both
internal and external that are part of the individual's coming to a social
response rather than the social response itself--so that when a vendor is
asked to calculate a price (from the kinds of studies cited in the book)
they might vocalize or subvocalize or mentally rehearse certain routines,
they might manipulate objects and calculating devices, they might gesture
towards body parts. The term, rather than to create a class of
insubstantial "mental events" was to create a continuity between external
and internal rehearsals. Of course there are methodological problems in
making these cognitive processes visible and isolatable--these problems
are at the heart of Mike's chapter and also I think at the heart of the
question he is calling our attention to in a message that followed shortly
after yours.
------
Chuck asked me to comment on the idea of cognitive practice.
I think that what he is pointing at with this term bears on the
problem Don Cunninham raised: all forms of psychological testing
and experimentation are themselves cultural practices .
Some sub-set of cultural practices that might be referred to as
"Cognitive practices" could be conceived of as those practices
where evaluations of mastery of various "cognitive routines" are
the goal of people's actions. Chuck's example of mentally rehearsing
something as a way of dealing with short term memory demands of a
particular kind might fall into this category. Counting on one's
fingers, or using an internalized model of an abacus might be others.
Sylvia Scribner once titled a paper, "Locating the experiment" in
cross cultural research, but her point, as she knew, was quite general.
Some time ago Don Norman coined the term, "cognitive artifact." I argued
that all artifacts have a cognitive aspect to them, but Don was pointing
at artifacts that entered into amplification of information processing
capacities.
mike