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Norman, D. (1993). Chapter 6: Distributed cognition. In _Things that
makes us smart_ (p. 139-153). Cambridge: Perseus Books.
A rather elegant and straightforward (for Norman) discussion of the
way in which environmental cues help to shape understanding and
decision making. Old school cognitive science considered human
cognition to occur in a disembodied brain, separated from the
environment. This model proves difficult when we consider how much
that brain would have to do to make decisions. A newer model casts the
brain as a participant in the environment where the environment helps
by providing cues that effectively acts as filters on the enormous
number of signals a brain would need to process. What's especially
nice about this model is that it allows for information processing to
not be perfect: it just needs to be good enough.
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