Cognitive science has traditionally viewed the mind as essentially disembodied, that is, the nature of mind and cognition is neither affected by the ¡Èsystem¡É it is implemented in nor affected by the environment that the system is situated in. But since the mid-1980s a new approach emerged in artificial intelligence that emphasized the importance of embodiment and situatedness and since then terms like embodied cognition, embodied intelligence have become more and more apparent in discussions of cognition. As embodied cognition has increased in interest so have the notions of embodiment and situatedness and they are not always compatible. This report has found that there are, at least, four notions of embodiment in the discussions of embodied cognition: software embodiment, physical embodiment, biological embodiment and human(oid) embodiment.

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.</p>

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This research investigated the uses of computer-mediated communication in providing an online field experience in an educational psychology course for pre-service teachers at a large research university in the southeastern United States. Twenty-seven pre-service teachers in one section of a Psychological Foundations of Educational Psychology course for pre-service teachers, eight practicing teachers, and eight university professors participated in this study. The participants viewed CD-ROM based video case studies as part of an online field experience component and communicated electronically through chat rooms and threaded discussion lists. Data sources included transcripts of all chat room and threaded communication, surveys, field notes, observations, and student tasks and reflections, as well as interviews with the pre-service teachers, practicing teachers, university professors, and one technical support person. The methodology involved a mixed method approach. A template organizing approach with the constant comparative method was used in order to develop patterns and themes. Content analysis was applied to the content of the chat transcriptions. Finally, a quantitative component was included in the analysis of the thread transcripts with a measurement of the development of the pre-service teachers' reflective comments over time using an analysis of variance test of within subjects effects. This document reports the findings concerning the nature of the conversations among the participants as they developed across time; the learning outcomes of the students, teachers, and professors; how a computer-mediated learning environment supports reflection; the benefits and challenges of using computer-mediated communication to study and learn about educational psychology and teaching; and the benefits and challenges of creating and maintaining such a learning environment. / Ph. D.

In response to the demands of 21st century teacher preparation practices, this developmental study was instigated by the need to employ appropriate strategies in the teaching of English as second language (L2) in Malawi. Using situated cognition theoretical construct as a basis, a framework for teaching L2 English as a situated practice was created. The development process was guided by views and practices of English methodology faculty members in Malawi's five secondary school teacher training institutions. The study was conducted in three phases, (i) analysis, where eight English methodology faculty members from Malawi's five institutions of higher learning were interviewed on the strategies they use to train pre-service secondary school teachers of English, (ii) development, where the framework was created based on results from the analysis phase, and (iii) evaluation and revision where the framework was reviewed and validated by a situated cognition expert and three of the faculty members interviewed in Malawi before it was revised. / Ph. D.

For centuries referential theories of language and meaning have dominated Western philosophy. The idea that noises and scratches become meaningful words and writing by virtue of a mental grasp one has on the referents they are talking about has become deeply entrenched. Starting with Plato, and reinvented by Locke, contemporary theorists continue to reproduce this mental fix requirement (MFR) in their philosophies of language and intentionality-Physicalists, such as Paul and Patricia Churchland are typical. Plato, Locke and the Churchlands all share the view that bits of language reach out to extra-linguistic entities by some act of mind (for Plato the mind grasped referents via the Forms, for Locke Ideas bridged the relation, and the Churchland's, brain states). In each case a self-referential mental act gets language up and running, i.e. mental connections (or representations) to referents do the trick. My question also concerns what makes squiggles and noises meaningful. The question is a nested one-ancillary to it are questions of what makes language work? How do words mean or relate to the world? How do speakers mean certain things and not others? I will approach the question from a contextualist perspective where roles in rule-governed activities are the bottom line, not representations in the mind/brain.

The topic of this thesis is how the decline of cognitive abilities and memory functioning in elder people can be assisted by external memory aids. This issue was approached through a combination of methods. The starting point was a literature review of two approaches to the study of memory – the traditional where memory functions are located in the brain and the situated where remembering transcends over external resources, and by a literature review on declining memory abilities in elderly people. An ethnographic study of everyday remembering in an older population, aged from 72 to 91, found many instances of the spontaneous use of the environment to support a declining memory ability, which in turn suggest that the traditional approach to memory research is of limited value when studying everyday memory abilities in older people. A study on existing memory aids, as well as memory aids currently under development in research laboratories showed that these technologies are primarily based on an explicit or implicit traditional view of memory that disregard several aspects of remembering in the natural world. It is therefore suggested that future development of memory aids could fruitfully benefit from a distributed and situated approach, where the individuals‘ current use of external memory aids are used as the starting point, with the goal of extending and amplifying methods and artefacts already spontaneously in use.

Agile programming methods have become popular in software development projects. These methods increase productivity and support teamwork processes. In this thesis, we have analyzed three well-known Agile methods - Scrum, Extreme Programming and Crystal Orange - from the perspective of situated cognition to investigate how well the methods support cognition. Specifically, we looked at how the methods aid memory and attention through the use of external representations. The study suggests that the methods support different aspects of situated cognition reasonably well. However, among the investigated methods, Scrum stands out due to aspects of task representation (progress charts), its approaches to externalize what-to-do (memory), and the means to focus on the important programming tasks for the day (attention).

Cette thèse propose d’étudier le rôle de la musique dans des contextes émotionnels intenses. Dans les rituels d’invocation de Dieu, les soufis tentent d’accéder à un état spirituel supérieur en s’approchant de la connaissance immanente du monde divin. La confrérie šaḏiliyya place la musique au cœur de ce processus : l’écoute de poèmes d’amour mystique chantés, puis la production collective de gestes dansés porte l’émotion à son paroxysme, en une extase contemplative (wajd). Entre ethnomusicologie et psychologie cognitive, cette thèse présente des pistes de réflexion pour l’étude des musiques vocales de tradition orale et leur expressivité. Dans un premier temps, une étude ethnographique dépeint le quotidien d’une confrérie damascène, pour tenter de déterminer les éléments musicaux pouvant être source d’émotion. Après une exposition des théories psychologiques cognitives de l’émotion, une analyse musicale acoustique s’intéresse plus particulièrement aux stratégies de deux interprètes. / The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate the role of music in intense emotional contexts. In Sufi invocation rituals, believers try to reach to a superior spiritual state in their quest for divine knowledge. The šaḏiliyya brotherhood includes music at the core of this process : by listening to mystic love songs followed by collective dancing, emotion reaches its paroxysm in an ecstatic contemplation (wajd). This dissertation lies in between the fields of ethnomusicology and cognitive psychology. It introduces several lines of thinking concerning the study of vocal music belonging to the oral tradition and its expressivity. First, a description of a Damascene brotherhood doctrine will highlight emotional elements in rituals. Then, following a presentation of major theories of emotions in cognitive psychology, two interpretations of the same work will be compared using acoustic and prosodic methods of analysis.