The dual nature of emotions as both bodily and cognitive phenomena has posed quite a conundrum for the cognitive sciences, as it does not square well with the long-held conviction that bodily phenomena are not cognitive and that cognitive phenomena do not take place in the body. This stark divide between the bodily and the cognitive has been called into question by so-called situated approaches to cognition that have taken over cognitive science in the last three decades. The framework of situated cognition claims to present a viable alternative to the classical cognitivist position in cognitive science, which regards cognitive processes as disembodied computations over symbolic representations. Instead, proponents of situated cognition aim at showing how cognitive processes crucially depend on an agent’s active engagements with the environment through her body, whereby bodily processes and interactions with the environment become parts of the cognitive process itself, thus lifting the barrier between body and cognition. This Ph.D.-Thesis explores how these recent developments in cognitive science may be applied to emotion theories, so that here too bodily and cognitive aspects of the phenomenon of emotion can be united. In this endeavor a particular focus will be laid on emotions’ intentionality, to explore how an embodied agent’s interactions with the environment impact how they are directed at the world and what emotions are about. After a cursory overview of the history of emotion theories and a brief introduction to situated cognition in section one, the articles in section two provide the necessary terminological and conceptual clarifications and render initial attempts to look into what it means for affective phenomena such as emotions to be situated. Section three draws the focus to the intentionality of emotions and demonstrates how a situated perspective provides a more adequate construal of emotions’ intentionality than the classical cognitivist conceptions. Finally, in section 4, the utility of situated affectivity is exemplified by showing how the embodiment and embeddedness of affective phenomena provides a deeper understanding of the structure of experiences in affective disorders such as depression.

The majority of cognitive scientists today view the mind as a computer, instantiating some function mapping the inputs it gets from the environment to the gross behaviors of the organism. As a result, the emphasis in most ongoing research programmes is on finding that function, or some part of that function. Moreover, the types of functions considered are limited somewhat by the preconception that the mind must be instantiating a function that can be expressed as a computer program. I argue that research done in the last two decades suggests that we should approach cognition with as much consideration to the environment as to the inner workings of the mind. Our cognition is often shaped by the constraints the environment places on us, not just by the "inputs" we receive from it. I argue also that there is a new approach to cognitive science, viewing the mind not as a computer but as a dynamical system, which captures the shift in perspective while eliminating the requirement that cognitive functions be expressable as computer programs. Unfortunately, some advocates of this dynamical perspective have argued that we should replace all of traditional psychology and neuroscience with their new approach. In response to these advocates, I argue that we cannot develop an adequate dynamical picture of the mind without engaging in precisely those sorts of research and hypothesizing that traditional neuroscience and psychology engage in. In short, I argue that we require certain types of explanations in order to get our dynamical (or computational) theories off the ground, and we cannot get those from other dynamical (or computational) theories. / Master of Arts

This thesis explores how we understand and articulate the idea of ‘absorption’ as a necessary aspect of an ‘optimal’ ‘mode of being/doing’ for the performer. By drawing upon pertinent aspects of the fields of phenomenology, consciousness studies, cognitive neuroscience and play theory coupled with Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of ‘flow’, the study develops a lexicon of terminology with which to articulate and understand the nature of ‘absorption’ for the performer in the context of ‘dance theatre’. By developing a focused articulation of the actual nature of ‘absorption’ for the performer in performance, seen as necessary to an ‘optimal’ ‘mode of being/doing’, the study intends to contribute to the language of discourse in this area of performance studies, and, importantly become a useful resource for the enquiring performer and practitioner. Consequently, in developing an understanding of ‘absorption’ for the performer, in order to edge closer to articulating an ‘optimal’ ‘mode of being/doing’ for the performer, the work and actions of the performer remain the focus of the study. The study is anchored in practice through examination of the work of three companies working within the genealogy of ‘dance theatre’. This multi-company approach gives a chronological and genealogical overview of ‘dance theatre’ practices useful in understanding ‘absorption’ for the performer, whilst also facilitating examination of individual points of practice within that overview. The companies profiled are: Pina Bausch, DV8 and Vincent Dance Theatre (VDT). The examination of work by Bausch and DV8 draws upon and reframes extant documentation of performance currently in the public domain. Examination of VDT’s work draws on original footage and interviews undertaken by the researcher during fieldwork.

This dissertation is about learning as changing understanding in social and situated activities. It takes part in the development of a reconceptualization of learning initiated within participationist perspectives. Multiparty interaction in situated activities is a primordial site for the exploration of human action and cognition. Through the theoretical framework of Conversation Analysis (CA), a method for the analysis and description of trajectories of learning is proposed. Departing from a view of learning, interaction, and cognition as closely related, learning is argued as gradually changing understanding in situated activities. The empirical material consists of video recordings from an elementary school and pilot training. The recordings are analyzed using CA methods, including detailed attention to embodied features of interaction. The analyses focus the development of trajectories of learning through the participants’ orientations. The trajectories are based on topicalizations and co-constructions of contents of learning, where interactional organization and content are interrelated. Participants are shown to make relevant relations between past, present, and future actions and material settings, and their ways of aligning and resisting participation and change are explored. A framework for the analysis of learning as embodied interaction in change is developed. The dissertation shows the fruitfulness of CA work for the understanding of learning processes. The results underline the importance of including embodied action, as constitutive of the co-constructions of contents, into learning studies. The value of highlighting learning as co-construction and of anchoring the analyses in the participants’ orientations is underscored. The results further the understanding of how people learn, and of how they make relevant knowledge and experiences in activity. The understanding of learning and change as action, which can be initiated, aligned with and resisted, opens up for future developments within CA, where learning researchers might be able to describe more precisely how human learning is constituted.

<p>This thesis addresses computer game play activities from the perspective of embodied and situated cognition. From such a perspective, game play can be divided into the physical handling of the game and the players' understanding of it. Game play can also be described in terms of three different levels of situatedness "high-level" situatedness, the contextual "here and now", and "low-level" situatedness. Moreover, theoretical and empirical implications of such a perspective have been explored more in detail in two case studies.</p> / Report code: LiU-Tek-Lic-2008:17.

Malaria is a major health dilemma with over 90% deaths occurring in Africa, south of the Sahara (WHO, 2003). Malaria has become endemic in South Africa, especially in the northeastern areas of three provinces, namely KwazuluNatal (KZN), Limpopo and Mpumalanga. The vulnerability of the infection is high during the summer rainy season between the months of September and May (Morris et al., 2013). ). An important case for consideration is the impact of malaria on the health of learners within these endemic areas. The study explored the possibility of promoting awareness of malaria education through the Life Skills curriculum in the Foundation Phase. The study applied Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) (Bandura, 1977) and the theory of Situated Cognition (Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989) in an attempt to explain the link between curriculum and malaria health education. The study uses two qualitative customs of inquiry, namely narrative inquiry and case study approaches. The research sites were two primary schools in the Hamakuya area of the Vhembe district that were purposefully selected. The participants were 21 learners in the Foundation Phase from the abovementioned two schools, ten parents and seven Foundation Phase teachers. Data were collected by means of semistructured interviews and documents analysis. The data were analysed through thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The study results revealed that teachers did not demonstrate holistic knowledge to embrace the entirety of the content they need to teach the children in the Foundation Phase about malaria. The study highlights that malaria incorporation into the Life Skills curriculum in the Foundation Phase may become may successfully bridge the malaria knowledge gap. The need for a health curriculum that integrates curriculum elements (such as planning, enacting and assessing learning outcomes) was revealed. This is necessary to entrench Foundation Phase learners with desired learning outcomes. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Early Childhood Education / PhD / Unrestricted

Situated cognition and engagement in a community of practice in online education has been difficult to attain through the information and communication technologies deployed throughout higher education. Effective real-time collaboration is a key component to the development of a community of practice and what has been missing in online business education. This study examined the integration of web conferencing tools and discussion boards to determine whether a community of practice formed in the Fox Online MBA program at Temple University. The investigation examined 13 students' interactions throughout a compressed five-week online marketing course delivered primarily through WebEx and Blackboard. Results show that the students were consistently actively engaged in the course throughout the real-time classes as well as the discussion board. Further, students' active participation focused primarily on how the course content related to personal and professional experiences. Evidence suggests that the students developed strong social bonds and a community of practice was present. / CITE/Mathematics and Science Education

Current policy and research have led the field of science education towards a model of "science as practice." In the past decade, several research programs on model-based reasoning practices in education have articulated key dimensions of practice, including constructing and defending models, comparing models to empirical data, using representations to identify patterns in data and use those as inscriptions to buttress arguments. This study presents a detailed case of how the use of a physical microcosm and children's self-directed representations of an ecosystem constrained and afforded student sense-making in an urban elementary classroom. The case analyzed the experiences of a 10-year old fifth grade student, Jorge, and the variation in his expressed understanding of ecosystems as he interacted with academic tasks, along with models and representations, to design, observe and explain an ecological microcosm. The study used a conceptual framework that brings together theories of situated cognition and Doyle's work on academic task to explain how and why Jorge's perception and communication of dimensions of ecosystem structure, function, and behavior appear to "come in and out of focus," influenced by the affordances of the tools and resources available, the academic task as given by the teacher, and Jorge's own experiences and knowledge of phenomena related to ecosystems. Findings from this study suggest that elementary students' ability or inability to address particular ecological concepts in a given task relate less to gaps in their understanding and more to the structure of academic tasks and learning contexts. The process of a student interacting with curriculum follows a dynamic trajectory and leads to emergent outcomes. As a result of the complex interactions of task, tools, and his own interests and agency, Jorge's attunement to the role of water in ecosystems comes in and out of focus throughout the unit. The instructional constraint of needing to integrate the FOSS Water Cycle curriculum into the Bottle Biology Project became an affordance for Jorge to ask questions, observe, and theorize about the role of water and the water cycle in an ecosystem. The practice of modeling a closed ecosystem made salient to Jorge the boundaries of a system and the conservation of water within that system. The closed ecosystem model also presented constraints to students' sense making about the role of interactions when students lack domain knowledge in ecology. Relying on students' own talk, photographs and representations as explanations of phenomena in the Bio Bottle, without establishing norms of representational conventions and communication, resulted in missed opportunities for Jorge to reinforce his sense making during the activity and to develop conventions of scientific representation. Findings from this study can be used to inform the design and implementation of learning environments and curricular activities for elementary and middle school students that address all three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards: a) developing conceptual understanding of key concepts in the domain of ecology, b) the cross-cutting concept of systems, and c) multiple practices that ecologists use in developing and evaluating models that explain ecosystem structures, functions, and change over time.

The dissertation is based on four papers that together offer a theory of General Situated Cognition. The project has two overarching goals: (1) to unify existing foundational approaches to cognition by investigating cognition within the framework of the philosophy of information; (2) to characterize the function of cognition and suggest a general (meta-)framework for cognitive architecture. Two of the papers, "Pre-cognitive Semantic Information" and "The Information Medium", deal primarily with the concept of information. They offer a pragmatic and structural account of information, as well as a novel and more general theory of meaning appropriate for simple, non-linguistic organisms - the interface theory of meaning. The papers lay the theoretical and conceptual machinery needed for the other two papers, "The Cognitive Agent: Overcoming Informational Limitations" and "Information Networks: A Meta-architecture for Situated Cognition", which investigate cognition as a general natural phenomenon. They specify the function of cognition as the mechanism in an organism that overcomes informational deficits. They also offer a broad architecture of cognitive systems based on networks of information media, which encompasses, and thus unifies existing approaches to cognition, such as the computational/symbolic approach, the connectionist approach, the dynamicist approach and the ecological embodied approach.

The central argument of this dissertation is that virtue ethics is overly individualistic. In response, I develop and defend a more relational, ecological account - what I call extended virtues. First, following Andy Clark, Kim Sterelny, and others, I argue that cognition and emotion can be embedded in, scaffolded by, or even extended to include various environmental resources. These arguments undermine default internalism about cognitive and affective processes. Next, I show how recent work in social and personality psychology similarly undermines individualism about the bearers of these cognitive and affective processes. Taken together, these arguments have significant but heretofore underappreciated implications for virtue ethics. After reviewing the literature which attempts to spell out the ethical implications of embedded, scaffolded, and extended cognition, I conclude that a more substantive engagement with virtue ethics is needed. I then show how plausible, mainstream theories of virtue assume default internalism and individualism, and are thus subject to charges of empirical inadequacy. Finally, I formulate my account of extended virtues in response to these shortcomings. I begin by making three explicit arguments for why an account of extended virtues is needed. I then develop two further arguments - the process argument and the bearer argument - which yield the conclusion that the processes relevant to, and the bearers of, moral and intellectual virtues can be embedded, scaffolded, or extended. After providing examples and filling in details about the hypotheses of embedded, scaffolded, and extended virtue, I propose that virtues are less like dispositions and more like relations. I conclude by suggesting that ecological metaphors such as stewardship are more fitting than traditional views of morality as inner strength.