ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book casts ecosocial systems as a new object of inquiry for situated cognition theory: “In an ecosocial systems model, the primary units of analysis are not things or people, but processes and practices. It presents a case study of Kirshner son’s logical development in infancy. The book also finds Walkerdine’s results to be of great interest, but argues that a broader range of semiotic tools is needed for situated cognition theory. Walkerdine’s semiotics draws on the Saussurean approach of signs as dyadic structures relating signifieds and signifiers. The book takes up the materiality of cognition through his observation that nonhuman animals, too, have situated cognition. In an ingenious reversal of the cognitive science position that logic-based computers simulate human cognition, Bereiter argues that humans can simulate the logic of the computer.
