The cognitive advantages of the notebook

Pablo Fernandez-Velasco; Jade Nijman; Roberto Casati

doi:10.1515/cogsem-2023-2003

Article

The cognitive advantages of the notebook

Pablo Fernandez-Velasco
Pablo Fernandez-Velasco is pursuing his research on the philosophy of place at Trinity College Dublin. He is also affiliated to the Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience of University College London. He completed his PhD at the Institut Jean Nicod, in the Department of Cognitive Science of Ecole Normale Superieure. The focus of his work is on how space and place structure human experience. He specialises in spatial cognition and in phenomenology. He follows an interdisciplinary approach, actively collaborating with neuroscientists, architects, geographers and anthropologists.
, Jade Nijman
Jade Nijman graduated from the University Paris 1 – La Sorbonne, with a double degree in History and History of arts. She pursued a research master at the EHESS in partnership with the Moleskine Foundation and worked on the cognitive advantages of paper notebooks, a reflection initiated by the study of the AtWork workshops organized by the Moleskine Foundation. She is now in first year of doctoral training “Arts and Languages” at the EHESS. Her research focuses on the analysis of the feeling of disorientation that occurs in the context of experiences involving contemporary art productions and exhibition spaces. Linked to her professional knowledge of the museum world and of exhibition scenography, she intends to mobilize knowledge related to UX (User Experience) design, museography and more philosophical conceptions of experience (phenomenology, aesthetics …).
and Roberto Casati
Roberto Casati, Senior Researcher of CNRS, Professor at EHESS, director of the Jean Nicod Institute of ENS/EHESS in Paris, one of the leading research centers in cognitive science, works on spatial disorientation and on cognitive tools for remediating or preventing it. He is the author of 120 research papers and book chapters on perception, spatial representation and the use of maps and images, as well as of ten books, some of which have been translated in many languages. His seminal work on Digital Colonialism has spurred a large debate on the use of technology in schools. The Cognitive Life of Maps will be published in 2023 by MIT Press; he is the editor of the collection The Sailing Mind (Springer, 2021). His latest book is Ocean: a Philosopher’s route.

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From the journal Cognitive Semiotics Volume 16 Issue 1

Abstract

Notebooks are widely used in a large number of professional and everyday life contexts. The notebook has been widely mentioned in the context of distributed cognition, the extended mind hypothesis and the study of cognitive artefacts. Despite its ubiquity and almost paradigmatic status, to date, there is no dedicated analysis of the notebook qua cognitive artefact, to explain its success and its resilience. Our aim is to fill this gap in the literature by studying a set of cognitive advantages of the notebook. For our analysis, we employ the methodological framework of distributed cognition. Using this framework, we find a series of cognitive advantages at both an individual and at a group level. At an individual level, these include external non-biological memory, the consolidation of long-term biological memory encoding, effects on attention modulation, an enhancement in metacognition and the graphication of thought. At the group level, the cognitive advantages include collaboration, the transference of content from one user to another, group-level metacognition, coordination, and the transformation of the overall epistemological setting in which notebook use takes place.

Keywords: Cognitive artefacts; Collaboration; Distributed Cognition; Notebook

Corresponding author: Pablo Fernandez-Velasco, Department of Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, E-mailp.fernandezvelasco@gmail.com

Funding source: Agence Nationale de la Recherche

Award Identifier / Grant number: ANR-17-EURE-0017

Funding source: Irish Research Council

Award Identifier / Grant number: GOIPD/2021/570

About the authors

Pablo Fernandez-Velasco

Pablo Fernandez-Velasco is pursuing his research on the philosophy of place at Trinity College Dublin. He is also affiliated to the Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience of University College London. He completed his PhD at the Institut Jean Nicod, in the Department of Cognitive Science of Ecole Normale Superieure. The focus of his work is on how space and place structure human experience. He specialises in spatial cognition and in phenomenology. He follows an interdisciplinary approach, actively collaborating with neuroscientists, architects, geographers and anthropologists.

Jade Nijman

Jade Nijman graduated from the University Paris 1 – La Sorbonne, with a double degree in History and History of arts. She pursued a research master at the EHESS in partnership with the Moleskine Foundation and worked on the cognitive advantages of paper notebooks, a reflection initiated by the study of the AtWork workshops organized by the Moleskine Foundation. She is now in first year of doctoral training “Arts and Languages” at the EHESS. Her research focuses on the analysis of the feeling of disorientation that occurs in the context of experiences involving contemporary art productions and exhibition spaces. Linked to her professional knowledge of the museum world and of exhibition scenography, she intends to mobilize knowledge related to UX (User Experience) design, museography and more philosophical conceptions of experience (phenomenology, aesthetics …).

Roberto Casati

Roberto Casati, Senior Researcher of CNRS, Professor at EHESS, director of the Jean Nicod Institute of ENS/EHESS in Paris, one of the leading research centers in cognitive science, works on spatial disorientation and on cognitive tools for remediating or preventing it. He is the author of 120 research papers and book chapters on perception, spatial representation and the use of maps and images, as well as of ten books, some of which have been translated in many languages. His seminal work on Digital Colonialism has spurred a large debate on the use of technology in schools. The Cognitive Life of Maps will be published in 2023 by MIT Press; he is the editor of the collection The Sailing Mind (Springer, 2021). His latest book is Ocean: a Philosopher’s route.

Acknowledgements

We received funding from Carnot Cognition IC/20/0030, Scripta-PSL “Histoire et pratiques de l’écrit”, ANR-17-EURE-0017 FrontCog, and ANR-18-CE28-0018 Education à l’esprit critique. PFV received a postdoctoral fellowship from the Irish Research Council (GOIPD/2021/570).

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Published Online: 2023-06-05

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/cogsem-2023-2003

Keywords for this article

Cognitive artefacts; Collaboration; Distributed Cognition; Notebook