Human Interactivity: Problem-Solving, Solution-Probing and Verbal Patterns in the Wild

This chapter presents an interactivity-based approach to human problem-solving in the wild. It introduces the notion of ‘interactivity’, here defined as sense-saturated coordination that contributes to human action. On this view, interactivity is an ontological substrate that can be studied as interaction, as cognition, or as ecological niche production. While the chapter theoretically argues in favour of a unified, trans-disciplinary approach to interactivity, it turns its attention to the cognitive ecology of human problem-solving. It does so by presenting a method of Cognitive Event Analysis, that leads to a detailed analysis of how a problem in the wild is being solved. The analysis addresses the cognitive dynamics of how two persons in a work setting reach an insight into the nature of a problem. These dynamics include the spatial organisation of the workplace, the interbodily dynamics between the two participants (especially in relation to gaze and the manual handling of papers), and verbal patterns that prompt them to simulate how the problem appears to a third party. The chapter concludes that human problem-solving is far less linear and planned than assumed in much work on the topic. Rather that problem-solving, it appears as solution-probing in real-time. The cognitive trajectory to a viable solution is thus self-organised, unplanned, and on the edge of chaos.

[1]  A. Clark.  Supersizing the Mind , 2008 .

[2]  C. Goodwin.  Action and embodiment within situated human interaction , 2000 .

[3]  Damien Litchfield,et al.  Interactivity and Embodied Cues in Problem Solving, Learning and Insight: Further Contributions to a “Theory of Hints” , 2013 .

[4]  S. Cowley.  Of Timing, Turn-Taking, and Conversations , 1998 .

[5]  T. Järvilehto,et al.  The Theory of the Organism-Environment System as a Basis of Experimental Work in Psychology , 2009 .

[6]  S. Steffensen.  Beyond mind: An extended ecology of languaging , 2011 .

[7]  P. Robbins,et al.  The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition , 2001 .

[8]  A. Clark,et al.  The Extended Mind , 1998, Analysis.

[9]  E. Schegloff,et al.  A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation , 1974 .

[10]  N. Miller.  I. The frustration-aggression hypothesis. , 1941 .

[11]  Sarah Pedersen.  Towards dialogical health care practices: human errors as a result of cultural affordances , 2010 .

[12]  I. R. MacKay.  David Crystal. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. 2nd ed. London: Blackwell. 1985. , 1987, Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique.

[13]  David Crystal,et al.  A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics , 1997 .

[14]  Guillaume Alinier,et al.  When life hangs on biosemiosis: Tracking expertise in a medical simulation centre , 2010 .

[15]  Pascale Carayon,et al.  Handbook of human factors and ergonomics in health care and patient safety , 2006 .

[16]  Thomas A. Stoffregen,et al.  Affordances and Events , 2000 .

[17]  Per Linell.  Rethinking Language, Mind and World Dialogically : Interactional and contextual theories of human sense-making , 2009 .

[18]  Paul J. Thibault,et al.  First-Order Languaging Dynamics and Second-Order Language: The Distributed Language View , 2011 .

[19]  F. D. Saussure.  Cours de linguistique générale , 1924 .

[20]  A. Chemero.  What Events Are , 2000 .

[21]  Robert A. Wilson,et al.  The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition: How to Situate Cognition , 2008 .

[22]  Stephen J. Cowley,et al.  Signifying Bodies: Biosemiosis, Interaction and Health , 2010 .

[23]  E. Lorenz.  Deterministic nonperiodic flow , 1963 .

[24]  Marianne L. Burda.  Letting Nature Take Its Course , 2008, The American journal of bioethics : AJOB.

[25]  David Kirsh,et al.  Thinking with external representations , 2010, AI & SOCIETY.

[26]  DAVID KIRSH,et al.  Interactivity and multimedia interfaces , 1997 .

[27]  Stephen J. Cowley,et al.  Signifying bodies and health: A non-local aftermath , 2010 .

[28]  Emma Norling.  Cognition Beyond the Brain: Computation, Interactivity and Human Artifice by Stephen J. Cowley and Frédéric Vallée-Tourangeau (eds.) , 2014, J. Artif. Soc. Soc. Simul..

[29]  N. Miller,et al.  Frustration and aggression , 1939 .

[30]  S. Ian Robertson,et al.  Problem-solving , 2001, Human Thinking.

[31]  J. Wertsch.  Voices of Collective Remembering , 2002 .

[32]  Bert H. Hodges,et al.  Values as constraints on affordances: Perceiving and acting properly , 1992 .

[33]  Kathleen D. Vohs,et al.  Encyclopedia of social psychology , 2007 .

[34]  David Kirsh,et al.  Distributed cognition: a methodological note , 2006 .

[35]  Florence Vidal.  Problem solving and creativity in individuals and groups , 1973 .

[36]  Stein Bråten.  Intersubjective communication and emotion in early ontogeny , 1998 .

[37]  Stephen J. Cowley,et al.  Mimesis and language: A distributed view , 2012 .

[38]  Stephen J. Cowley,et al.  Cognition Beyond the Brain: Computation, Interactivity and Human Artifice , 2013 .

[39]  Mark Perry,et al.  Socially distributed cognition in loosely coupled systems , 2010, AI & SOCIETY.

[40]  T. Järvilehto,et al.  The theory of the organism-environment system: I. Description of the theory , 1998, Integrative physiological and behavioral science : the official journal of the Pavlovian Society.

[41]  Ben McGarry,et al.  Things to Think With: Understanding Interactions with Artefacts in Engineering Design , 2005 .

[42]  Stein Bråten.  The Intersubjective Mirror in Infant Learning and Evolution of Speech , 2009 .

[43]  Sune Vork Steffensen,et al.  Language, languaging, and the Extended Mind Hypothesis , 2009 .

[44]  Sune Vork Steffensen,et al.  Care and conversing in dialogical systems , 2012 .

[45]  F. Vallée-Tourangeau,et al.  Einstellung Defused: Interactivity and Mental Set , 2011, Quarterly journal of experimental psychology.

[46]  James D. Hollan,et al.  Distributed cognition: toward a new foundation for human-computer interaction research , 2000, TCHI.

[47]  Edwin Hutchins.  How a Cockpit Remembers Its Speeds , 1995 .

[48]  Robert W. Weisberg,et al.  An examination of the alleged role of "fixation" in the solution of several "insight" problems. , 1981 .

[49]  B. Hemmingsen.  The Quick and the Dead: On Temporality and Human Agency , 2013 .

[50]  E. Reed.  Encountering the world: Toward an ecological psychology. , 1997 .

[51]  E. Hutchins.  Cognition in the wild , 1995 .

[52]  W. Silvers,et al.  Skin transplants and the hamster. , 1963, Scientific American.

[53]  S. Steffensen,et al.  Language, Ecology and Society: A Dialectical Approach , 2007 .

[54]  Sarah Pedersen.  Interactivity in health care: bodies, values and dynamics ☆ , 2012 .