Cognitive Science 234 is the graduate version of the Distributed Cognition course. It is taught in concert with the undergraduate Distributed Cognition course, COGS102A. In addition to reading all of the material assigned in the undergraduate course, students in COGS234 will read, discuss and write about additional materials. Students enrolled in COGS234 are expected to attend the COGS102A lectures. In addition, there will be a dedicated COGS234 seminar meeting.

Historically, the broad concensus in the cognitive science community has been that the individual person, or even the individual brain is the best unit of analysis for human cognition. The material assembled for this course provides an alternative framework: Distributed Cognition.

We will focus on how cognition recruits resources both inside and outside the individual person. Many of the most important cognitive processes involve interactions among brain, body, and culturally organized world for action.

Major course themes include the history and philosophy of cognitive science, the role of artifacts in human cognition, socially distributed cognition, the role of the body and action in cognition, and how all of these things change through time.