Abstract
Recent writings on cognition have focused on the contribution of external representations in supporting internal thought processes. External representations have been found to be so instrumental to thought that cognition is described as “distributed.” “Distributed cognition” refers to the way that cognitive achievements arise from not only the internal thought processes of people, but also from the external representations such as the material systems, sketches and information technologies with which they work. The term “distributed” also refers to the fact that thinking processes may be distributed among members of a social group. This chapter focuses on how material representations — prototypes and bits of hardware — are instrumental to thinking in engineering design. In the closing discussion, extensions to other fields of design are considered.
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Brereton, M. (2004). Distributed Cognition in Engineering Design: Negotiating between Abstract and Material Representations. In: Goldschmidt, G., Porter, W.L. (eds) Design Representation. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-85233-863-3_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-85233-863-3_4
Publisher Name: Springer, London
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