Exercise 1: Meaning and Space

Consider a university lecture as a cognitive activity system. You participate in this activity almost every day, so observe carefully. Analyze this system using the same strategies used in Ch 1 of CitW. Describe the physical, social, and conceptual spaces involved. It is really helpful to make sketches or diagrams of all three spaces. Drawing the physical layout of the lecture hall is relatively straightforward (although you might get creative here). Representing the social spaces in diagram form is more challenging mostly because the social space is a metaphorical space, and because you may not be familiar with conventions for depicting social status or relations. Drawing the conceptual space of the lecture hall will probably be the most challenging. Everyday psychology – folk theory of mind contrasts with scientific knowledge about cognition.

Show how the three spaces are related to one another. This could be interesting. Explore the possibilities. For example, describe the ways that physical space encodes facts about the social organization of the activity, or the ways that changes in conceptual content are marked by features of physical space. Try finding ways to combine your representations of the separate spaces into composite spaces. Just as the combination of different kinds of information layers on a navigation chart makes powerful new inferences possible (this is a point that is made in chapter 3 of CitW), see if any new inferences emerge from your composite representations.

Write up the results of your exploration in a 1000 word essay. (See the guidelines on how to write an essay.) You can include any diagrams you made or other materials you created in doing the exercise as supporting documents.