Cognition. Dynamic systems approach Author: Elena Pasquinelli [INSTNICOD], Julien Lagarde [UM-1], Benoit Bardy [UM1] Contributors: none Current version (on 2005-07-11) The Dynamic Systems approach to cognition aims at capturing by dynamical laws the macroscopic organisation of goal directed behaviours of man and animals through the application of the mathematical concepts and laws of dynamics [Thelen & Smith, 1994]. These laws relate quantities describing the states of the system and their evolution in time. The aim consists in finding a meaningful description of the behaviour, in relation to the task goal, and focus on the stability of this behaviour. These laws are non linear, which accounts for the multistability of behaviours, and the sudden changes between stable patterns of behaviours. The use of dynamical systems for the description of self-organization of behaviours originated in the discovery of a phase transition in brain and behaviour by [Kelso, 1984, 1995], modelled by a bifurcation in a dynamical system by [Haken, et al., 1985], using the tools forged in the field of synergetics [Haken, 1977]. At the core of the approach lies the concept of change in real time, concerning the total state of the system with all its components co-evolving simultaneously. This evolution is represented geometrically [van Gelder, 1999]. The focus of the attention is hence directed upon persistence. Persistence exists because there are changes that reveal them (the concept of transformational invariants), and changes exist because there are states that reveal them (the qualitative bifurcation between states under the influence of a quantitative control parameter). A large set of co-evolving factors, including bodily factors and environmental factors is taken into account. The Dynamic Systems approach is in fact characterized by a strong accent on the connections between the body, the brain and the behavioural processes:
“This situates cognition within the same continuous, timebased, and non-linear processes as those involved in bodily movement, and in large-scale processes in the nervous system […] Finding a common language for behaviour, body, and brain is a first step for banishing the spectre of dualism once for all […] This changes the information-processing flow from the traditional input-transduction-output stream to one of timebased and often shifting patterns of cooperative and competitive interactions. The advantage is the ability to capture the subtle contextual and temporal influences that are the hallmarks of real life behaviour in the world.” [Thelen et al., 2000, p. 5] The Dynamic Approach is thus related to the view of cognition which is expressed by Enactive, Embodied and Situated approaches in contrast with some of the tenets of the Representationalist/Computationalist view.
References: Haken, H. (1977). Synergetics: an introduction. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York. Haken, H., Kelso, J.A.S., Bunz, H. (1985). A theoretical model of phase transitions in human bimanual coordination. Biol Cybern 51: 347-56. Kelso, J.A.S. (1984). Phase transitions and critical behavior in human bimanual coordination. Am J Physiol 15: R1000-R1004. Kelso, J.A.S. (1995). Dynamic patterns: the self-organization of brain and behavior. MIT Press, Cambridge. Thelen, E., & Smith, L. B. (1994). A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Thelen, E., Schoner, G., Scheier, C., & Smith, L. (2000). The Dynamics of embodiment: a field theory of infant perseverative reaching. Behavioral and Brain sciences, 1-74. van Gelder, T. J. (1999). Dynamic approaches to cognition. In R. W. F. K. eds. (Ed.), The MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences (pp. 244-246). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Related items: Cognitive sciences Embodied cognition Enaction Perception. Motor theories Representational/computational paradigm
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