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Distributed Cognition: Understanding Complex Sociotechnical Informatics

Furniss, D; Garfield, S; Husson, F; Blandford, A; Franklin, BD; (2019) Distributed Cognition: Understanding Complex Sociotechnical Informatics. In: Applied Interdisciplinary Theory in Health Informatics. (pp. 75-86). IOS Press Green open access

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Abstract

Distributed cognition theory posits that our cognitive tasks are so tightly coupled to the environment that cognition extends into the environment, beyond the skin and the skull. It uses cognitive concepts to describe information processing across external representations, social networks and across different periods of time. Distributed cognition lends itself to exploring how people interact with technology in the workplace, issues to do with communication and coordination, how people's thinking extends into the environment and sociotechnical system architecture and performance more broadly. We provide an overview of early work that established distributed cognition theory, describe more recent work that facilitates its application, and outline how this theory has been used in health informatics. We present two use cases to show how distributed cognition can be used at the formative and summative stages of a project life cycle. In both cases, key determinants that influence performance of the sociotechnical system and/or the technology are identified. We argue that distributed cognition theory can have descriptive, rhetorical, inferential and application power. For evidence-based health informatics it can lead to design changes and hypotheses that can be tested.

Type: Book chapter
Title: Distributed Cognition: Understanding Complex Sociotechnical Informatics
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.3233/SHTI190113
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.3233/SHTI190113
Language: English
Additional information: This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0).
Keywords: DiCoT, Distributed cognition, Informatics, Sociotechnical, Cognition, Communication, Medical Informatics, Technology
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > UCL School of Pharmacy
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > UCL School of Pharmacy > Practice and Policy
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10080071
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