Cognition has components...
Some components of cognition have smaller, nested components...
The components of cognition are linked...
Nested components of cognition are linked...
The activity of and relationships among components of cognition are not fully deterministic...
Your feedback is most welcome. I've touched on some of the ways I think this model (stochastic scale-free coordination class) can be supported by experience in the classroom, such as concepts within concepts and student questions that seem "random". What other aspects of cognition and learning do you think this model can support? What aspects of cognition and learning have only limited, if any, representation within this model?
ahem.
ReplyDeletelaughing at this. I'll let you guess who I am (though I could post my name!). Grinning...
So there's
* Minsky's frame-systems from a while back. diSessa, Sherin, Hammer, Wittmann all grew out of this tradition.
* Redish's work on the connections between resources and neuro systems.
* Wittmann's resource graphs,
and there's the whole field of connectionism, which is related to all this.
Now, to your question of aspects of cognition and learning touched on by this model, you'll have to contact the UMaine folks (Wittmann, Sayre, Black, Springuel, Smith) as it relates to physics...
I really do like your description of stochastic scale-free coordination class models, which gets me thinking of Uri Wilensky at Northwestern, who has done more work on scale-free models. The network theory hasn't gotten that far, simply because there's not enough known about the objects that play a role in the cognitive modeling.
I know, it's not much help, but for now at this time of night, it's the best I can do.
Hi "Anonymous" (*cough* Michael *cough*) .. my reply is so tardy I'm not sure you'll see it, but I appreciate the helpful links! I need to spend some time updating the graphics now that I've finished Pinker's "How the Mind Works" - it reinforced the conceptual nesting aspect, but reminded me that I need to find a way to show the inhibitory and excitatory weights of the connections between components.
ReplyDelete