Abstract
This chapter will examine a topic that (more or less explicitly) emerged in many of the previous pages: the relation between mental simulation and computer-based simulation (Fig. 6.1). What are the similarities and differences between these two types of simulation? How do they interact? How can they be integrated to enhance learning?
When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten.
(Zhuangzi, XXVI.II)
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Notes
- 1.
The Apple II home computer was released in 1977 and was the first computer to be used on a broad scale in American secondary schools. IBM responded to the success of Apple II by releasing the IBM PC in 1981. This was the first microcomputer based on an open architecture, which allowed third parties to develop software and hardware for it and other companies to manufacture “PC compatible” clones, igniting the personal computer revolution thereby.
- 2.
In a cognitive load perspective (see Sect. 5.6), a state of mindfulness can be compared to a condition in which a student’s available working memory resources are currently devoted to the learning task at hand, whereas a mindlessness state refers to a condition of high extraneous cognitive load.
- 3.
A position that has its roots in Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of mind development, which also influenced Cole’s cultural psychology and Engeström’s activity theory. These approaches in turn focus on the notion of artifacts as culturally constructed mediators of human cognition and behavior (Cole and Engeström 1993).
- 4.
From an anecdotal perspective, the present Author has observed that many people, rather than searching for specific information in their own memory prefer looking it up on the Internet.
- 5.
This position is less outlandish than might first seem, as it stems from the functionalist viewpoint in philosophy of mind, which states that it is the functional organization of a process that determines whether it is cognitive or not. Cognitive processes can therefore be instantiated in a given physical system, as long as this system performs the appropriate functions. It should also be noted, however, that the extended mind hypothesis presumes that it is not phenomenal consciousness (the distinctively subjective character of a conscious experience) that extends beyond the customary boundaries of cognition, but the non-conscious portion of cognitive processes (see Chalmers 2009, p. xiv; Clark 2009, p. 267).
- 6.
Even when simulation reproduces a highly well-known phenomenon, as typically occurs in instructional contexts, its results are not preliminarily known to students; it is therefore analogous to an actual experiment. The analogy holds even more soundly in the scientific research context, where simulation is used as an actual experiment (Morrison 2009), or supports the lab experiment set-up and the interpretation of data generated thereby (Tal 2011).
- 7.
The division of labor is an economic concept highlighted in Marxist philosophical and social thought, as it indicates the ways in which workers are assigned to various stages in the production process. Activity theory (Engeström 1987) uses the same notion to indicate the division of activities among actors in a socio-technical system.
- 8.
thanks to which, research on the content(s) of personal memory can be now extended to the contents of global memory, available at any moment, nearly anywhere on the planet.
- 9.
The media theorist Derrick De Kerchove commented on the topic in his book “The Skin of Culture” (1997), but did so by emphasizing the extension of sensory capacity (e.g., visual, kinaesthetic, tactile) allowed by virtual reality environments, such as flight simulators or multi-user virtual environments.
- 10.
The students’ off-line use of mental simulation based on their memory of on-line simulation in facilitating the solution of post-test problems is an example of Salomon et al. (1991) “cognitive effect of technology”, which they distinguished from an “effect with technology”.
- 11.
The software used was T-MITOCAR (Pirnay-Dummer and Ifenthaler 2010).
- 12.
Sutton et al. (2010) defended the idea of a complementarity framework for extended cognition, in opposition to approaches based on the parity or functional equivalence of neural and external components.
- 13.
See Seel (2012b) for an overview on potentially fruitful relations between the sciences of learning and semiotics.
- 14.
This peculiarity of representing the future, in ancient times, was exclusively reserved to prophesy or magic.
- 15.
As illustrated in Chap. 3, reducing the relation between model and reality to a dyadic relation based on logical correspondence or structural isomorphism has been an approach long-used in philosophy of science. The pragmatic approaches described in Sect. 3.4 re-introduced the intentional agent as an essential aspect for the representation relation, but generally focused more on his/her practical purposes than on underlying mental processes.
- 16.
Peirce (1907, p. 411) termed this process of meaning creation “semiosis”.
- 17.
Similarly as occurs in software for architectural design or molecular graphics.
- 18.
As occurs in the mental simulation of simple mechanical or hydraulic systems. (see Sect. 2.2).
- 19.
They became feasible in the 1940s, after the invention of the operational amplifier, i.e., a device able to transform a small input signal in into a much larger output signal. This type of amplifier was called “operational” because it allowed for the development of electronic circuits able to use a continuously variable signal to perform numerous mathematical operations, such as summation, subtraction, multiplication, logarithm, and integration with respect to time.
- 20.
These laws are typically expressed through ordinary differential equations (ODEs), with time as the independent variable. Yet, analog computers based on field computation can also solve partial differential equations (PDEs).
- 21.
Mead’s proposal was motivated by the conviction that “the nervous system of even a very simple animal contains computing paradigms that are orders of magnitude more effective than are those found in systems made by humans” (1989, p. xi).
- 22.
Similar progress occurred for television sets, where potentiometers were formerly used to control picture brightness, contrast, and color. Nowadays, with digital technologies, they are visualized on the screen as virtual sliders to be regulated by remote control.
- 23.
A form of coupling that may be figuratively associated with the culturally recurring theme of mankind’s initial “Edenic” condition, in which humans lived in an “eternal present” not yet detached from nature and the world around them.
- 24.
Both Paivio’s dual code theory and Baddeley’s model of working memory have strongly influenced cognitive theories of multimedial learning, which developed during the 1990s and in the 2000’s (see Sect. 5.6).
- 25.
An example of this difficulty is the failed attempt to transform the verbal language of programming languages into the visual language of flow diagrams. During the 1980s, nearly all programs had be accompanied by flow diagrams. It was then realized that methods other than visual ones are easier to interpret, such as, e.g., the pseudo-code technique for writing programming instructions that are similar to everyday language (Ware 2008).
- 26.
An error that in part accounts for the “hype” (exaggerated statements actually not supported by solid scientific evidence) occasionally encountered in the promotion of simulation as an educational technology.
- 27.
Baddeley (2000) added a component to his initial working memory model—the “episodic buffer”—which has the function of integrating visual, spatial, and verbal information from the other subsystems to create coherent and storable episodic memories that can be consciously retrieved from long-term memory.
- 28.
Senge listed the following archetypes in his book “The Fifth Discipline”: Balancing process with delay, Limits to growth, Shifting the burden, Eroding goals, Escalation, Success to the successful, Tragedy of the commons, Fixes that fail, Growth and underinvestment. Although originally conceived for organizational learning, the same archetypes can be applied in other fields, such as ecology and the social sciences.
- 29.
Narrations have the power to “bifurcate” into a series of alternative branches, similarly to the bifurcations of a nonlinear dynamical system, as suggestively illustrated by the author Jorge Luis Borges in his 1941 story of “The Garden of Forking Paths”.
- 30.
Somewhat surprisingly, cognitive linguistics and instructional science have, for the most part, developed along completely separate lines of research. From an instructional perspective, notable exceptions are Hestenes’ (2010) modeling theory for mathematics and science education and Fuch’s (2007, 2010) approach to the teaching of thermal physics. In cognitive linguistics, Lakoff and Núñez (2000) investigated the conceptual metaphors underlying mathematics and consequently proposed modifications to mathematics education.
- 31.
As for mental simulation in general, simulations of this type are not necessarily activated each time a student hears a metaphorical phrase, but presumably only when the learning task requires that a specific metaphor phrase be used for inferences.
- 32.
A “classic” used in many Cognitive Science studies as an example of the difficulty of analogically transfering one problem’s solution to another domain. The story concerns an army’s attempt to conquer a fort with access roads planted with landmines. The problem’s structure is similar to that of a problem requiring a doctor to use radiaton to destroy a malignant tumour without damaging the surrounding tissues. Although the two problems are structurally analogous, Gick and Holyoak (ibid.) found that only 30 % of participants reading the fortress story were able to transfer their knowledge of the solution to the tumor problem.
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Landriscina, F. (2013). Simulations for Thinking. In: Simulation and Learning. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1954-9_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1954-9_6
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