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From information processing to dialogical meaning making: an experiential approach to cognitive ergonomics

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Abstract

In this paper, we argue that modelling human action as the execution of predetermined goals and cognition as information processing does not account for people’s experience with emerging technologies, which is as much about values, trust and identity as about executing tasks. We offer a complementary approach to information processing within cognitive ergonomics, which builds on Bruner’s characterisation of cognition as meaningmaking, and which sees human action as simultaneously creating and executing goals and human cognition as dialogical meaning making. An analysis of field work carried out in two ambulance control centres is employed to exemplify aspects of the creativity and responsivity of work activity that are central to our approach. Finally, in this context, we briefly consider how technological artefacts could be conceptualised as centres of value in an approach to cognitive ergonomics that attempts to accommodate the intellectual, emotional and valuative aspects of work activity.

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Acknowledgments

Pat Healey collected the ambulance control data with financial support from an EU Training and Mobility Network (CHRX-CT93-0099) and a related fellowship (ERBCHBGCT 9405610). Andy Dearden also contributed to data collection and analysis on this project. The collaboration between Peter Wright and John McCarthy is supported by an EPSRC Fellowship (GR/S18799/01). We would also like to thank the editors of Cognition, Technology and Work and the anonymous reviewers whose comments helped to improve the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Psychology, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

    John McCarthy & Michael Cooke

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of York, York Y010 5DD, UK

    Peter Wright

Authors
  1. John McCarthy
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  2. Peter Wright
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  3. Michael Cooke
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Correspondence to John McCarthy.

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McCarthy, J., Wright, P. & Cooke, M. From information processing to dialogical meaning making: an experiential approach to cognitive ergonomics. Cogn Tech Work 6, 107–116 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-004-0149-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-004-0149-z

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