**3. Cognitive niches**

The History lesson depicted in this chapter is an event occurred in a highly institutionalized environment – the classroom, where we can find very specific social and cognitive practices. As to institutional contexts of learning, it is the most immediate level of analysis of these accomplishments, and is considered here as a cognitive niche.

A cognitive niche is a dynamic setting established and associated to the adaptative relationship between people (among other species) and environments. It comes from the idea of ecological niche in Evolutionary Biology (Cosmides and Tooby, 2000; Clark, 2006; Bardone and Magnani, 2007), and it is related to the dynamics of the adaptation mechanisms developed for living in different environments and habitats. A good definition for niches is given by Sinha (1988, p. 131), and fits perfectly the Distributed Cognition postulations: "a niche is a negotiated, ordered, spatial-temporally structured relationship between organism and habitat, in which behaviours are in part transformative of the environment to which they are adapted". Like any ecological-environmental structures constructed by many species, cognitive niches are made for protection and survival, a better perception of the environment, facilitated access to resources and resolution of immediate problems. As a result of the person's action, cognitive niches become meaningful settings wherein people can create tools and techniques, and develop abilities. This perspective brings possibilities to observe the ways in which the capacity of creating and maintaining niches give people the opportunity to develop themselves cognitively and learn, and favour the cultural and material enrichment of social groups.

Evidently, the idea that cognitive development and learning presuppose the person integrated to the environment is not new. It can be found for example in Vygotsky's work (Vygotsky, 1987), and substantiates influential theories such as the one presented in Tomasello (1999). But now the cognitive transformation proposed by these authors can be seen together with the fact that learning can also affect and re-structure the environment around the learner.

The idea of cognitive niches employed in studies of learning environment presupposes the articulation between concepts originally associated to perceptual mechanisms and theoretical constructs related to conceptualization and learning. This association is possible due to the fact that perception and conceptualization are strictly associated phenomena. Articulating this account to studies on cognition and learning can bring to light several phenomena and also expand our notion about learning, as this action allows us to define with more accuracy what components are desirable and what variables must be observed for a learning task to be accomplished.

6 Current Topics in Children's Learning and Cognition

**3. Cognitive niches** 

material enrichment of social groups.

around the learner.

enterprise if he had not taken this twofold goal into account.

accomplishments, and is considered here as a cognitive niche.

They both at the same time compel him to built a kind of discourse which satisfies his didactic necessities: to minimally repeat what was said by the teacher, selecting the facts which defined the fugue of the Royal Family to Brazil, and accomplish this task in conditions to say things which can be meaningful to the students. To do this, he accesses the previous knowledge related to their own space and time, and leads them to understand what motivated facts occurred in another space and time. He could not be successful in his

The History lesson depicted in this chapter is an event occurred in a highly institutionalized environment – the classroom, where we can find very specific social and cognitive practices. As to institutional contexts of learning, it is the most immediate level of analysis of these

A cognitive niche is a dynamic setting established and associated to the adaptative relationship between people (among other species) and environments. It comes from the idea of ecological niche in Evolutionary Biology (Cosmides and Tooby, 2000; Clark, 2006; Bardone and Magnani, 2007), and it is related to the dynamics of the adaptation mechanisms developed for living in different environments and habitats. A good definition for niches is given by Sinha (1988, p. 131), and fits perfectly the Distributed Cognition postulations: "a niche is a negotiated, ordered, spatial-temporally structured relationship between organism and habitat, in which behaviours are in part transformative of the environment to which they are adapted". Like any ecological-environmental structures constructed by many species, cognitive niches are made for protection and survival, a better perception of the environment, facilitated access to resources and resolution of immediate problems. As a result of the person's action, cognitive niches become meaningful settings wherein people can create tools and techniques, and develop abilities. This perspective brings possibilities to observe the ways in which the capacity of creating and maintaining niches give people the opportunity to develop themselves cognitively and learn, and favour the cultural and

Evidently, the idea that cognitive development and learning presuppose the person integrated to the environment is not new. It can be found for example in Vygotsky's work (Vygotsky, 1987), and substantiates influential theories such as the one presented in Tomasello (1999). But now the cognitive transformation proposed by these authors can be seen together with the fact that learning can also affect and re-structure the environment

The idea of cognitive niches employed in studies of learning environment presupposes the articulation between concepts originally associated to perceptual mechanisms and theoretical constructs related to conceptualization and learning. This association is possible due to the fact that perception and conceptualization are strictly associated phenomena. Articulating this account to studies on cognition and learning can bring to light several phenomena and also expand our notion about learning, as this action allows us to define The definition of the classroom as a cognitive niche, taking into account all the variables delineated above, can help to create for the students an atmosphere auspicious for their success in school, because it opens space for a reliable observation of issues, processes and artifacts associated to learning, and for a specific study of the school environment, which is a setting whose features and behaviors are already known by learners and school agents.

These actions take, as a core point, the student's cognition and knowledge as constitutive features of every learning accomplishment. Therefore, if we seek to understand the basis of the cognitive actions of the students, we will be able to perceive, from how they think, who they are, instead of establishing in advance who they will be, and from this prescribe how they learn – a criticism posed by many authors who problematize the institutionalized learning and meaning construction (Walkerdine, 1988; McDermott, 1993; Lave, 1993; Sinha, 1999, among many others).

In this chapter we are focusing on the cognitive niche as a setting constructed through a dynamics related to the understanding and engagement in interactions wherein intersubjectivity negotiations, normative crossings and possibilities of re-semiotization to solve problems of meaning (and recreate meanings as well) are at stake. It can help us assume cognition in a situated becoming, where things constitute an intersubjective flow of negotiation and (re)semiotization of the structuring features of our cognitive construals of the world.

In the History classroom niche that we are observing, two different events unfolded relatively to the goals of each one, to the learning conditions of each information, and from the establishment of who talks and who listens – since both exercised an agency over the cognitive processes that take place in that setting. In both cases, the niche remained the same as to its basic constraints, but each event made it work under different conditions, which were caused by the change of roles that the contingencies determined.

When the teacher was the keynote speaker, the intersubjectivity conditions were defined in advance and not negociated; rather, they were established in such a way that the students had to strive to transport themselves to the space-time depicted by her. Their previous knowledge was not accessed, because the teacher did not fulfill the task to bring information and contents of their everyday lives to the semiotic construcion in the classroom setting. The result was that there were free associations and a few actions of re-semiotization of material and symbolic objects to meet the needs of understanding. The possibilities of learning were not favored.

However, when Acerola was the keynote speaker, some diferences in the niche were observable: there was more intersubjective negotiation, promoted by the fact that Acerola and his colleagues dealed with the same everyday reality, thus he had the chance to bring and add common knowledge to the semiotic construction in the classroom, and helped them understand the contents of the lesson. This could have helped him fulfill his task.

As to the intersubjectivity conditions which are specific to the classroom niche, we still need to stress that the possibility of the success of Acerola in interacting with his colleagues because they all bring together the same previous knowledge does not justify the failure of the teacher. On the other hand, having commom and shared everyday previous knowledge does not guarantee the teacher's success in promoting learning in the classroom. Rather, one of the fundamental actions for minimal conditions of referential intersubjectivity (Sinha and Rodriguez, 2008) is the recognition that the previous knowledge of the learners is a constitutive feature of the didactic practice. This condition allows them to build bridges between what they already know and the new information that the teacher is offering them. This is a basic didactic prescription and keeps its value in all perceptions about cognition and learning, whether or not distributed.

Learning in Cognitive Niches 9

important in a specific enterprise, what constitute our identities situatedly established in

This idea allows us to connect the concepts of affordance and cognitive niche in a Distributed Cognition perspective: the possibility of recognizing affordances in a specific setting is directly related to the recognition of this setting as a niche. The opposite can also be said: if the person is placed in a given environment and is not willing to recognize affordances (or something else) in that environment because he/she does not have any purposes to be there, it is quite

This fact reveals the extent to which what we see is tied by our goals of being there. It is in this sense that we construct cognitively the possibilities of affecting environment and being affected by it. In this perspective, the detection of affordances is an activity that, besides requiring and revealing intelligence, improves procedurally the intelligence of those who detect it (Dennett, 2000; Franks, 2011), because it is a procedure closely connected to the semiotization and re-semiotization of things, and is also an action that brings new things

If we take into account that affordances are built under the functionalities and contingencies of cognitive actions in a given niche, we can assert that material artefacts in the classroom can be affordances, to the extent that they are seen as something functionally useful in specific moments. In this sense, their functions can be re-created as this action becomes

So as the map used by the teacher and Acerola. The teacher has used the map in its prototipical function, but Acerola, as he delivered his lesson, he brought into existence a new kind of map, which came from the blending of conflicting dimensions: the Western World of the past, and the Rio de Janeiro of the present. It is not possible not necessary to design and manufacture a specific map which can bring these specific information. But it is possible to conceptually build it through the interaction of the determinant features of Acerola's and the teacher's speeches. He did that this way because the teacher's map did not fit his need to adapt the previous knowledge of the students to the information of the

The cognitive operation which describes the relationship between internal and external domains is called *conceptual integration* (Fauconnier and Turner, 2002; Sinha, 2005; Zhang and Patel, 2006), a general process which accounts for phenomena in low and high level cognition, as well as perceptual phenomena. Also known as *blending*, conceptual integration is the term which gives name to a net of sophisticated processes which subsumes relationships among domains of every kind and the creation of novel artefacts, ideas, techniques, etc. Conceptual integration is also used to describe online construction of meaning in every domain of experience. In the blend, features of these domains are coupled according to the aspects they bring which are relevant for the specific aim of the cognitive processing. There are no

possible that he/she does not recognize that setting as a real cognitive niche.

each context of action and thought.

necessary to solve new problems.

**5. Affordances and conceptual integration** 

into existence.

lesson.
