Cognitive Science 1
Oxford,
The
ICAE
©
9781405131995
04April
Original
50
Cognitive
72008
International
2007
Blackwell
UK
Articles
SciencePublishing
Encyclopedia
Ltdof Communication
Blackwell
Publishing
Ltd
Cognitive Science
Jeremy N. Bailenson
Stanford University
Jesse Fox
Stanford University
Cognitive science is the study of mind, and is an interdisciplinary field that encompasses
psychology (→ Psychology in Communication Processes), philosophy, computer science,
education (→ Learning and Communication), neuroscience, anthropology, and linguistics.
The intellectual origins of the field can be traced back to the 1950s, when researchers first
began to use formal mathematical representations and computational structures to
model theories of mind (→ Cognition). Cognitive science became an “official” field in the
late 1970s; in 1976, the first issue of the journal Cognitive Science was printed, and the first
meeting of the Cognitive Science Society took place in 1979.
According to Thagard (1996, 5), “Cognitive science proposes that people have mental
procedures that operate on mental representations to produce thought and action.” What
binds researchers across the various contributing disciplines is the notion that the
processes that occur during cognition can be represented abstractly by some type of predictive representation. The nature of that specific representation depends on the discipline;
for example, philosophers rely on formal logic, artificial intelligence researchers employ
computer code, neuroscientists are guided by biological structure, and cognitive psychologists often use statistical analyses to fit data resulting from experimentation. By building
theoretically driven, empirically tested structures of cognitive processes, cognitive scientists
seek to increase understanding of the mind, as well as to build systems that are able to understand, predict, and generate human thought and action (→ Information Processing).
The methods employed by cognitive scientists vary greatly. Linguists (→ Linguistics)
are most concerned with developing formal systems of syntax, semantics, phonetics, and
pragmatics (→ Discourse, Cognitive Approaches to), and their work typically consists of
comparing sentences and utterances. Often, this is done by examining databases of
existing language, whereas some linguists perform laboratory experiments and implement computer models to test their theories. Psychologists rely primarily on laboratory
experiments, aiming to understand how people form categories, reason, perceive stimuli,
and encode, store, and retrieve memories. To accomplish these goals, psychologists
examine the outcome of various experimental manipulations, the amount of time it takes
an experimental subject to perform a task, and the various strategies people implement to
complete the task. Computer scientists, in comparison, most often build algorithms to
simulate artificial intelligence, creating programs that can comprehend or generate language,
exhibit creativity, or solve problems. Cognitive anthropologists compare multiple cultures
to assess the universality of mental structures, often using ethnographies, field observations, and some direct manipulation of experimental variables.
In sum, cognitive science spans many disciplines and methodologies, but researchers
across this field seek to answer the same fundamental question: how are information
processes represented in the mind?
2 Cognitive Science
COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATION
In terms of their history and organization, the fields of communication and cognitive
science share many characteristics. One of the main professional bodies of the communication field, the International Communication Association (→ Communication as
a Field and Discipline), was officially formed around the time (1950) that much of the
work in cognitive science began. Like cognitive science, communication is a new field
with its roots in a number of related disciplines such as psychology, sociology, political
science, linguistics, journalism, anthropology, and economics. Thus, not only are both
fields extremely interdisciplinary; they share many of the same sub-fields. Throughout the
world, departments of cognitive science and communication are becoming more common.
The similarities between the two fields are quite manifest. A number of scholars who
teach and research in communication departments were trained in cognitive science and
vice versa. Furthermore, while it is rarely listed in textbooks as a component sub-field,
many would agree that communication is one of the related sub-fields within cognitive
science. For example, when comparing a popular textbook in communication (Griffin
2003) to a widely used textbook in cognition (Medin et al. 2001), one notes that both
feature very prominently, in the opening pages of the book, the classic work by Claude
Shannon on information processing. Of course, there are international and cultural
variations in the use of textbooks and the crossover between the two fields, but overall the
relationship is robust.
Craig (1978) was among the first communication scholars to explicitly point out the
practical and theoretical overlap between the two fields. Later, Craig (1999) recognized
→ cybernetics, an approach informed by cognitive science, as one of seven “traditions”
of the communication field. According to Craig, cybernetics “points out surprising
analogies between living and nonliving systems, challenges commonplace beliefs about
the significance of consciousness and emotion, and questions our usual distinctions
between mind and matter, form and content, the real and the artificial” (1999, 141). He
argued that modern communication theory evolved from the works of Shannon, von
Neumann, and Turing; cognitive scientists cite these same scholars as the foundation
for the development of their field. From the cybernetic perspective, communication is
defined as information processing or an evaluation of input in order to produce output.
One of the most fruitful ways of comparing the two fields may be to think of communication as a macro-version of cognitive science. Cognitive scientists create models of
human behavior to gain insight into the underlying structure of the mind. In order to do
so, they often study how a person interacts with some set of information or stimuli.
Similarly, communication scholars examine the exchange of information among people
to provide an understanding of the structure of human interaction. In communication,
scholars study how people interact with others face to face as well as through media
technologies and cultural artifacts. From the perspective of cognitive science, communication research might be said to take the model that cognitive scientists apply to
one person interacting with information, and transfer that model to interaction among
multiple individuals and society. This micro/macro-relationship between the two fields
can be illustrated by comparing case examples of the Stroop Effect from cognitive science
with the notion of interactional synchrony from communication.
Cognitive Science 3
The Stroop Effect (Stroop 1935) is considered a classic paradigm in psychology, and
basically addresses how people attend to and process stimuli by examining patterns of
interference when these stimuli contain a cue conflict (e.g., an experimental subject
attempts to quickly state the meaning of the word “green” although it has been written in
a red font). This theoretical model continues to drive a large amount of work in cognitive
science, including linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence (see
MacLeod 1991 for a review of this work). By studying how people process various types
of information with an explicit conflict in cues, one learns more general lessons of how
the brain and the mind are structured.
Interactional synchrony (Kendon 1970) refers to the idea that successful communication among multiple parties depends on their simultaneous and coordinated use
of multiple channels. A key finding is that interaction succeeds only when the many
verbal and nonverbal cues are correctly in synch, both within a speaker (i.e., the speaker’s
verbal cues should not conflict with his or her nonverbal cues) and across speakers (i.e.,
the verbal and nonverbal cues between two speakers should be coordinated). By taking the
general “cue-conflict” paradigm arising from the Stroop Effect, communication scholars have
been learning more about how people interact with one another (→ Social Cognitive
Theory). The paradigm of cue conflict has been applied to studies of processes of social
interaction, both face-to-face interaction (Burgoon et al. 1995) and mediated forms of
interaction (Capella & Pelachaud 2002; Lee & Nass 2004; Bailenson et al. 2005).
To sum up, cognitive science attempts to formulate models of how the mind processes
information, while communication research attempts to formulate models of how
information flows between people, culture, and society. The paradigm of cue conflict serves
to illustrate this micro/macro-distinction within two related interdisciplinary fields.
IMPLICATIONS FOR COMMUNICATION RESEARCH
Cognitive science can enrich our general understanding of the psychological processes
that inform the production and interpretation of messages (→ Message Production). Several
specific phenomena that are commonly addressed by communication researchers lend
themselves to cognitive approaches, including interpersonal scripts (→ Schemas and Media
Effects; Schemas; Schemas, Knowledge Structures, and Social Interaction; Scripts), priming
(→ Priming Theory), attitude accessibility, patterns of discourse, → human–computer
interaction, and responses to media stimuli such as those originally hypothesized by → Albert
Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory. Each of these areas of inquiry can benefit from
the exchange of methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives. A combination
of micro- and macro-levels of analysis will provide a greater, more holistic understanding
of communication and of the wider relationship between human cognition and behavior.
SEE ALSO: Bandura, Albert Cognition Communication as a Field and Discipline
Discourse, Cognitive Approaches to Human–Computer Interaction
Information Processing Learning and Communication Linguistics Message
Production Priming Theory Psychology in Communication Processes Schemas
Schemas, Knowledge Structures, and Social Interaction Schemas and Media Effects
Scripts Social Cognitive Theory
Cybernetics
4 Cognitive Science
References and Suggested Readings
Bailenson, J. N., Beall, A. C., Blascovich, J., Loomis, J., & Turk, M. (2005). Transformed social
interaction, augmented gaze, and social influence in immersive virtual environments. Human
Communication Research, 31, 511–537.
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Burgoon, J. K., Stern, L. A., & Dillman, L. (1995). Interpersonal adaptation: Dyadic interaction
patterns. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Cappella, J. N., & Pelachaud, C. (2002). Rules for responsive robots: Using human interactions to
build virtual interactions. In A. L. Vangelisti, H. T. Reis, & M. Fitzpatrick (eds.), Stability and
change in relationships. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 325 –354.
Craig, R. T. (1978). Cognitive science: A new approach to cognition, language, and communication.
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 64, 439–467.
Craig, R. T. (1999). Communication theory as a field. Communication Theory, 9(2), 119 –161.
Griffin, E. (2003). A First Look at Communication Theory, 5th edn. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Kendon, A. (1970). Movement coordination in social interaction: Some examples described. Acta
Psychologica, 32(2), 101–125.
Lee, K. M., & Nass, C. (2004). The multiple source effect and synthesized speech: Doublydisembodied language as a conceptual framework. Human Communication Research, 30(2), 182–207.
MacLeod, C. M. (1991). Half a century of research on the Stroop Effect: An integrative approach.
Psychological Bulletin, 109(2), 163 –203.
Medin, D. L., Ross, B. H., & Markman, A. B. (2001). Cognitive Psychology, 3rd. edn. Austin, TX: Harcourt.
Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental
Psychology, 12, 643 –662.
Thagard, P. (1996). Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Walther, J. B. (1996). Computer-mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal and
hyperpersonal interaction. Communication Research, 23, 3 – 43.