A review of Annie Murphy Paul’s “The Extended Mind”
A recent meme pulled from the 2009 film Coraline features the eponymous character’s father slumped over his computer with a fatigued expression. Throughout the film, Coraline Jones traverses the natural world outside her, interacting with neighbors, all the while following her gut feelings about the evil motives of the “Other Mother,” the film’s antagonist. Coraline’s energetic explorations of the world around her offer a stark contrast to her father’s stagnant office work.
Students and professionals may resonate with Mr. Jones’ experience: sitting still in an unadorned cubicle or office, under steady fluorescent light, eyes glued to a small screen. Expecting themselves to churn out reports and new insights at a consistent rate. Growing frustrated and fatigued.
Might our thoughts and work be better served by utilizing an extended version of our mind? That’s the premise of science journalist Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind.
Paul delves into three areas of “the extended mind” that can help us better utilize the capabilities of our minds: embodied cognition, situated cognition, and distributed cognition. These areas can facilitate a sort of breaking free from today’s commonly held metaphors for the mind as a computer with machine-like qualities or like a muscle that you can develop over time and repeated effort. She explains how these culturally pervasive analogies have contributed to the notion that thinking is strictly brainbound. By presenting a slew of evidence for the use of bodily, environmental, and social cognition in our everyday work, Paul posits that “We can tap the intelligence that exists beyond our brains.”
Coraline is an example of someone doing just that: embracing an extended mind. Throughout the film, she listens to bodily cues, such as those that imply impending danger (embodied cognition); she enthusiastically engages with nature around her (situated cognition); and bounces her ideas off of others to help her solve her predicament (distributed cognition). Let’s look into these ideas a bit more closely.
Embodied Cognition
In the first section of the book, titled “Thinking with our Bodies,” Paul details how we can use sensations, movement, and gesture to our benefit. This is called embodied cognition; what we feel within our bodies and what we do with them has a measurable impact on how we think. For instance, she highlights the fascinating work of applied psychologist John Coates, who explored how certain financial traders with a higher “awareness of the inner state of the body” tend to perform better on the trading floor. Coates evaluated traders’ interoception, or inner awareness, by the accuracy with which they could detect the rhythm of their heartbeats. We can develop our interoception by attending to other internal sensations such as a “constriction in your chest” or “a lifting and opening of the ribcage.” Interoception is an ability that can be honed through practices like meditation.
Another instance of embodied cognition is the way our observations and thoughts may be altered (generally for the better) via physical movement. While anecdotally I’ve experienced how taking breaks for walks or exercise can sharpen my thinking, I enjoyed reading proof that movement is positive fuel for knowledge work. For instance, fidgeting can fuel focus, and exercise helps to prime our brains for thinking via “heightened arousal, increased blood flow to the brain, and the release of a number of neurochemicals.” Lastly, gesturing with our hands helps us both learn and teach. Paul provides an interesting application of gesture in the field of geology: “Professional geologists, for example, employ a range of specialized gestures to think and communicate about the way terrestrial layers bend, fold, and shift in space.” Everyone from infants to students to working professionals benefits from communicating with their hands.
Situated Cognition
My personal favorite section of The Extended Mind, “Thinking with our Surroundings,” explicates the brain as a “context-sensitive organ.” Perhaps this idea of situated cognition is best illustrated through psychologist Roger Barker’s “Midwest Study.” The key finding of this study, which observed a group of children throughout their days, is that “the factor that overwhelmingly determined the way the children acted was the place in which they were observed.” We’ve all experienced this, shifting our behavior depending on where we are: unreserved at home, perhaps, or reflective in a place of worship.
We can capitalize on our environments to work more creatively and better approach “society’s demand for increasingly abstract thought.” Some simple applications Paul suggests: Inject your workspace with personal mementos or inspiring posters. Expose yourself to nature to the degree you’re able — if you can coordinate a three-day trip off the grid, do it, but if introducing a plant to your workspace is what’s within reach, that will help too. Use an additional computer monitor to reap the benefits of the brain’s strong navigational and spatial abilities.
Distributed Cognition
The final section, “Thinking with our Relationships,” provides examples of distributed cognition. In Paul’s words, distributed cognition is “how our thinking is extended by… our interactions with other people.” She classifies these interactions into three chapters dedicated to thinking with experts, peers, and groups, respectively.
While experts have much knowledge to share, they often encounter the interesting challenge of imparting what they know to novices in a detailed way. They struggle because, Paul explains, “much of experts’ knowledge and skill has become ‘automatized’ — so well practiced that they no longer need to think about it.” Let’s say a surgeon is struggling to articulate the intricacies of a procedure to students out loud. Technology like eye-tracking can show a medical student how to look in the way the expert surgeon does, helping bridge the knowledge gap between the two individuals.
Not only can experts help us sharpen our minds, but our peers and the groups in which we operate can do so, as well. Paul described the “jigsaw classroom,” an interesting type of educational model, in which students divide into teams, with each member responsible for learning about a particular aspect of the material in the unit. Then, each student teaches their assigned material to the rest of the group. This inherently social example of learning touches on the concept of “transactive memory,” which you have experienced if you ever asked a family member or roommate, “Where do we keep the [household item I’m looking for]”? Essentially, by relying on others to share the knowledge they possess and we do not, we can remember more than we’d be able to individually.
Takeaways
This brings me to one of the concluding tenets of The Extended Mind: “Whenever possible, we should offload information, externalize it, move it out of our heads and into the world.” Paul would argue that instead of extolling mental math and rote memorization, we should praise the tools available to us that allow us to extend our mental activities to bodily movements, physical objects, and other people.
Paul’s work makes a strong case for shifting how we view the mind. I found it a liberating read in the midst of a world that is constantly urging us to simply work (read: think) harder. It’s full of scientific studies that validated my anecdotal experiences of how extending my thinking beyond the organ in my skull makes me work more energetically and creatively. If you are looking for an overview of the concepts of embodied cognition, situated cognition, and distributed cognition, I recommend reaching for it; it is a friendly read for those who might be new to the concepts, like myself. For those who are more familiar with the concepts, it still may serve as a useful reference book as it touches on many varied subjects with a thorough index.
In a culture that’s long embraced the mind as a computer, The Extended Mind offers an inspiring shift in perspective with a collection of practical applications. Rather than chastising myself to just think harder next time I hit a mental block, I might choose to play with a fidget spinner on my desk, take a brisk walk, or ask a colleague to engage with me in a productive push back against my ideas. In the gentle way Paul encourages her readers to be empathetic to the qualities of the human mind, I invite you to do the same. In other words, emulate Coraline, not her father.
Shelby Smith is an Insight Associate at Olson Zaltman.
