5356574 cognitive ethology a new approach for studying human cognition

7/30/2019 5356574 Cognitive Ethology a New Approach for Studying Human Cognition

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clear that most statements were true if, and only if, particular laboratory conditions weremet. In other words, the relationship between factor A and factor B was predictable if,

and only if, specific conditions were established within the lab; the relationshipbetween factors became unpredictable when these laboratory situations were not met.Thus, for example, memory experiments found that what people remembereddepended on factors such as (a) what processing they performed on the stimulusmaterials; (b) what stimulus materials they expected to receive; (c) what materials wereactually presented; (d) what people were doing before their memory was measured; (e)

how their memory was measured, and so on and so forth. The take home message wasthat cognitive processes vary and are affected by what is happening elsewhere withinthe cognitive system, and therefore cognitive processes depend critically on the specificsituational context in which a subject is embedded.

The fields response to the above fact has generally taken one of the two forms. Onereaction is to deny that there is a problem. This response enables one to maintain theinitial assumption that cognitive processes are invariant and unaffected by what ishappening elsewhere, and thus allows one to continue to create and study laboratory-specific phenomenon like nonword repetition memory or inhibition of return. Theother reaction is to acknowledge that there is a problem, but then continue to conductresearch predicated on the assumption that cognitive processes are invariant. Bothresponses are what Broadbent (1991) has called pathological.

Occasionally, investigators like Donald Broadbent and Ulric Neisser have tried a third

response. They acknowledged that cognitive processes change with situational changesand worked hard to bring the implications of this fact to the awareness of others.Perhaps their only mistake was to trust that the next generation of researchers would

take their words to heart and try to find a solution to the issue. In hindsight, this faith hasproven to be grossly misplaced, as the next generation of researchers have adopted oneof the pathological responses of the past and grounded their neuroimaginginvestigations on the false assumption that cognitive processes are invariant acrosssituations. It is precisely this false assumption that allows researchers to make theremarkable claim that the cognitive processes that they engage and measure in a simple,artificial brain neuroimaging situation captures the same fundamental cognitiveprocesses and associated neural systems that are engaged in a complex natural situation.

The aim of the present paper is modest but against this historical backdrop, we

believe it is vital. We aim to initiate a dialogue among researchers regarding the fact thatcognitive processes vary substantially with changes in context. We also hope tostimulate researchers to find a response to this issue that is not pathological. By puttingforward a possible solution of our own, a novel research approach that we callCognitive Ethology, our intention is to encourage other researchers to develop andadvance their own positive responses. While what follows for the remainder of thispaper focuses primarily on instances of cognition as it pertains to the investigation ofhuman attention, we think that the issues we raise here can be readily extended to otherresearch domains of human cognition.

Laboratory research

Laboratory research in the field of human cognition is founded on the criticalassumption that human cognition is subserved by processes that are invariant andregular across situations. This invariance assumption enables one to conduct a study in

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the laboratory and then to propose that the process being measured is expressed ineveryday life. Importantly, there is a second assumption that falls out of the first. Given

that processes are assumed to be invariant across situations, it follows that one canreduce situational variability without compromising the nature of the process one ismeasuring. Indeed, a basic objective of the experimental environment in the laboratoryis to gain as much control over a situation as is possible so that any change can beattributed to the variable that is being manipulated.

Together, these assumptions provide a powerful onetwo punch. The assumption of

process stability enables the scientist to be concerned with real-life situations withoutever having to leave the laboratory. In addition, the assumption of control drives thescientist increasingly away from complex real-life situations to paradigms that aresimple, contrived, and artificial.

These assumptions are not, however, without their risks. For instance, theassumption of invariance eliminates any need or even obligation for the scientist toconfirm that the process being manipulated and measured in the laboratory actuallyexpresses itself in the real world. Investigators do, of course, through the process ofreplication, check that their lab-based effects are regular within the laboratoryenvironment. Unfortunately, a result that is invariant within the strict confines of thelaboratory does not mean that it is reproducible outside the lab. Indeed, even a cursoryexamination of the literature reveals that there are many instances where even the mostminor change within a laboratory situation will compromise the replicability of an effect

(e.g. Atchley & Kramer, 2001; Berry & Klein, 1993; Bindemann, Burton, & Langton,2008; Soto-Faraco, Morein-Zamir, & Kingstone, 2005; Wolfe & Pokorny, 1990). Inaddition, as any researcher knows all too well, failed replications that are published

represent just the smallest tip of a very large iceberg of failed replications that areobtained in the laboratory and never published.

Upon closer consideration, there is a good reason why lab-based effects should be soremarkably fragile. After all there is a large, well established, and growing body ofliterature indicating that process stability is tied intimately to the situation used to createit, with participants strategies and associated brain configurations changing from onesituation to the next (see for instance Duncan & Owen, 2000 for a review). Neisser(1976) referred to these dynamic configurations as schemata, Monsell (1996) hasspoken of task-set reconfigurations, and Di Lollo, Kawahara, Zuvic, and Visser (2001)

have referred to configurable input filters. In each case, the basic message is thatcognitive processes change with situational context; and conversely, process invariancereflects situational stability.

We acknowledge that some cognitive processes are relatively regular acrosssituations. Some aspects of language production would seem to qualify. However,critically, based on laboratory findings alone, it is not possible to know whethermechanisms that appear invariant in the laboratory environment will survive outside thelab. Thus, the principle of invariance cannot, and should not, be assumed. This point ismade most forcefully by Broadbent when he writes: In light of the evidence I would feel

this [assumption of invariance] is almost pathological; it can only be preserved byavoiding the literature produced by people who use different background conditions ofexperiment (Broadbent, 1991, p. 874).

Ironically, any attempt to test the assumption of invariance against real-life

situations is met immediately with obstacles that arise from the second assumption ofexperimental control. The first obstacle is that cognitive concepts often become definedby the experimental controls that are used to examine them. For instance, reflexive

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attention is often defined as a process that benefits the detection of, and response to, avisual target stimulus that occurs shortly after the abrupt onset of a peripheral, spatially

non-predictive, stimulus event. It is not clear whether such a sequence of events everoccurs naturally in real life, and if it did, how this event could be measured.

Let us accept for the moment that this first obstacle is somehow overcome, andreflexive attention as defined in the laboratory is measured in the real world.A researcher is then immediately posed with the second obstacle of having to make thecase that the data collected in the real-life situation are, in fact, a manifestation of the

same process being measured in the lab. This is a daunting, and perhaps an ultimatelyimpossible, obstacle to surmount. Our reservation is derived from the very fact thatvariables that are controlled in the laboratory are not controlled in real life. Therefore, areal-world effect that appears to be the product of a controlled laboratory effect can

always be re-attributed to factors that were uncontrolled in real life. Conversely, thefailure to find evidence of a laboratory effect in the real world can be dismissed, as it is afallacy to conclude that something does not occur simply because one does not findevidence for its existence. Thus, there is no direct way to demonstrate or refute thatcausal factors found in a simple lab-based setting are also being expressed in a complexreal-world situation. Note that the purported real-world relevance of lab-basedfindings cannot be falsified; such claims, therefore, are, in this most important regard,unscientific.

Driving the nail further into this coffin is the fact that general systems theory (see

Ward, 2002; Weinberg, 1975) has demonstrated that tight experimental control can beeffective at revealing the basic characteristics of simple linear systems but it isineffective at revealing the characteristics of complex, non-linear systems, which must

surely include the human cognitive system. General systems theory holds that certainstable characteristics of complex systems are only revealed, or emerge, when severalvariables are able to vary together. Of course, this is precisely what is prohibited incontrolled laboratory situations, and it is precisely what occurs in uncontrolled naturalsituations.

Cognitive Ethology

If there are both practical and principled reasons to conclude that lab-based studiesgrounded on the assumptions of invariance and control are unlikely to inform us aboutcognitive processes as they are expressed in real-life situations, then what areresearchers to do? Our experience, like that of Broadbents (1991), has been that,whether or not researchers acknowledge that the assumptions of invariance and controlare problematic, they behave as if these assumptions are unproblematic and that theywill lead to cognitive theories that are universally valid. We sympathize with these

responses and fully acknowledge that we have indulged in them ourselves. There ismuch to be said for denial. It lets one continue to do what one loves to do to generatequestions and hypotheses, design experiments, collect data, write papers, go toconferences, interact with colleagues, mentor students, and in general to moveforward in ones career as a scientist. Any and all of these items are powerful motivatorsfor us to look away from the basic fact that doing our simple experimental lab-basedstudies is not going to enable us to develop theories that can predict and explain

cognitive processes as they are expressed in real-world situations. A second option, andone that we explore in the remainder of this paper, is to first directly study how peoplebehave in their natural real-world environments before moving into the lab. That is,



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rather than being locked into a laboratory paradigm with the a prioriassumption thatthe paradigm or task that is being applied is tapping into processes that are expressed in

everyday life-situations, one would instead opt to explore first how people behave asthey function within a naturally occurring situation. Once this complex problem spaceis identified and described then one could begin to move into the laboratory to testhypotheses that are generated by real-world observations. We have called this approachCognitive Ethology.

A Nature publication by Land and Lee (1994) provides a good illustration of a

research approach that is grounded in the principle of first examining performance as itnaturally occurs. These investigators were interested in understanding where peoplelook when they are steering a car around a corner. This simple issue had obviousimplications for human attention and action, as well as for matters as diverse as human

performance modelling, vehicle engineering, and road design. To study this issue, Landand Lee monitored eye, head, steering wheel position, and car speed, as driversnavigated a particularly tortuous section of road. Their study revealed the new andimportant finding that drivers rely on a tangent point on the inside of each curve,seeking out this point 12 seconds before each bend and returning to it reliably.

For the present purposes, what is especially striking about the Land and Lee paper isthat it was conducted without falling into the standard experimental assumptions ofinvariance and control. By stating that one is interested in understanding how oneperforms in a real-world situation, like driving around a corner, one is implicitly

acknowledging that there may be no model laboratory task that can speak to thequestion under consideration. In other words, this Cognitive Ethology researchapproach rejects the assumption of process stability. In doing so, it assumes that

processes may be contextualized to the situation within which they occur.The Land and Lee study is also important because by choosing to measure

performance as it naturally occurs, Land and Lee were rejecting the standard a prioriassumption that variance that is not manipulated experimentally is something to becontrolled. This alternative way to deal with variance, to let it occur naturally andmeasure it, is based on the assumption that variance may reveal key characteristics ofcognitive processing. In other words, it is based on the assumption that variance is partof the complex cognitive signal that must be understood. This is the second keyassumption underlying the Cognitive Ethology approach. It also dovetails with the basic

tenet of general systems theory that complex systems are only revealed, or emerge,when several variables are free to co-occur.

At a first glance it may seem that Cognitive Ethology is merely espousing an appliedapproach to research, that is, an approach that will result in a non-integrated collectionof insights regarding human behaviour in specific real-world contexts. While suchknowledge is of unquestionable utility, it is not our focus. We wish to make a far broaderand deeper claim. We argue that cognitive processes and behaviours that aregeneralizable and meaningful are most likely to reveal themselves when people arestudied first under the real-world conditions where multiple variables are free to

co-occur. Specifically, we argue that it is by starting with real-world observations andindividual variation that one is most likely to generate subsequent research questions forinvestigation that may lead to general principles of cognition that have relevance tonaturally occurring phenomena. Note that we are not stating that by studying behaviour

outside the laboratory one can assume that generalization between situations willoccur (see for instance the study by Underwood, Chapman, Crundall, Cooper, & Wallen,1999 which suggests important limitations to the Land and Lee (1994) investigation).



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Rather, we are saying that by starting at this level of investigation one can begin to askquestions that are truly relevant to the real world; and over time begin to draw out

features of behaviour that are common across natural situations by conducting studiesboth inside and outside of the laboratory (see for instance Hayhoe & Ballard, 2005).

In sum, the Cognitive Ethology research approach rejects the standard assumptionsof invariance and control, and in their place we find a commitment to understanding the

situation against its real-life background conditions and the variance within thatenvironment. According to this approach, the initial job of the researcher is simply to

observe, describe, and measure what people do and experience in the situation ofinterest (see also Koch, 1999; Rosch, 1999). In this regard, description of real-worldbehaviour and experience serves to define the explananda of inquiry. Of course, suchan observation is unlikely to be of much value in artificial laboratory situations where

human behaviour is typically highly constrained. For instance, in a typical fMRI attentionexperiment that measures human behaviour and brain activations, people are onlyallowed to move one finger to press one key, with all other movements, including evenminor head and eye-movements prohibited.

Yet, the observation of real-world behaviour is very different. As stated by Koch(1999, p. 27), description is no lowly or easy task; it is in fact the very basis indeed, theflesh of non-spurious knowledge. Description of peoples cognitive functioning incomplex real-world situations is intrinsically valuable and meaningful because it isgrounded in reality and therefore maps out precisely what cognitive research ultimately

seeks to predict and understand.Related to the emphasis on describing cognitive functioning in the real world is the

notion that researchers can begin their research enterprise by describing cognition in

the concepts that are used in everyday folk-psychological language (see Prinzmetal &Taylor, 2006; Birmingham, Bischof, & Kingstone, 2008, for recent instances of folkpsychology helping to guide research). To be clear, this approach does not entailnecessarily accepting folk-psychological explanations of cognitive functioning, nordoes it reject the idea that important concepts should be refined and given moretechnical meanings on the bases of subsequent scientific inquiry. Rather, the CognitiveEthology approach simply asserts that there is a potential benefit of initially groundingour observations and concepts in real-world situations.

Just as there were practical problems for the assumptions of invariance and control

when they are applied to understanding real-world phenomena, one finds that there arealso practical problems for the assumptions of situation and variance. One key problemis quite simply that it is very hard to do research at the real-world level. It is hard forseveral reasons. First, it is difficult because there are no off the shelf model tasks to usewhen one conducts this form of research. Hence, one cannot, for instance, simplymanipulate the Posner cueing paradigm or the visual search paradigm and claim that oneis gaining new insights into how people allocate their attention in everyday life (seeKingstone, 1992; Eastwood & Smilek, 2005 for precisely this type of claim). Instead, onehas to spend a good deal of time observing and describing what people are doing. In

addition, because one is not attempting to control what people do, there is atremendous amount of variation in the behaviour that people produce whether it isdifferent people at the same time or one person at different times. It is also difficultbecause there is relatively little scientific data on how people behave in the real-world

situations rather than in artificial laboratory environments. This means that whatquestions and approaches are most interesting and likely to bear fruit are largelyunknown. It also means that there may be little or no previous work performed on how



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to go about analysing the data one collects, and therefore, one may have to create newanalysis tools to gain a full understanding of the data that has been collected.

We would argue, however, that these challenges are better viewed as excitingopportunities for researchers interested in truly discovering and understanding humancognition. All the complex real-world data one collects, and all the questions that oneexplores and answers, provide a foundation for future investigations and a benchmarkagainst which other studies can be measured. By beginning ones research enterprise atthe level of natural performance rather than lab-based manipulations one sets out to

discover what really happens in the world, and in the words of Neisser finding out whatreally happens in the world around us : : : will be worth knowing in any imaginablefuture (Neisser, 1976, p. 10).

Integrating Cognitive Ethology with laboratory investigations

Our position, that Cognitive Ethology and lab-based studies are founded on opposingassumptions, raises the question as to whether these two approaches should be viewedas competing or complementary. On the one hand, they may be seen as competing

frameworks. Informal discussions with our colleagues, as well as a historical reading ofthe field (e.g. Banaji & Crowder, 1989; Neisser, 1991), indicates that real-world and lab-based investigations have tended to be viewed as competitive enterprises. Our

demonstration that the two forms of research are based on opposing assumptions makesthis conflict between approaches a natural one. Yet, their goal is ultimately the same topredict and explain human cognition as it operates in the real world. Therefore, onewould think that the two frameworks might be able to operate in harmony rather thanopposition.

We would go one step further and suggest that only when both approaches are

rigorously pursued will it be possible to achieve the goal of understanding howcognition operates in everyday settings. In short, we see these two research frameworksas complementary and mutually constraining. This point is illustrated by a second

Nature paper by Land and Horwood (1995) that followed up on the original Land andLee (1994) investigation. Land and Horwood conducted controlled laboratoryexperiments in a driving simulator to determine what kinds of cornering informationare critical to normal, and abnormal, driving performance. They did this bysystematically removing corner information that is normally present in the real-worlddriving environment. The critical point that we wish to make here is that the laboratoryexperiment conducted by Land and Horwood (1995) was based on a rigorousdescription of driving behaviour in the real world reported by Land and Lee (1994).Once that description was in place, then the obvious transition was to the laboratory to

recreate, control, and manipulate the effect. Notice though that without first havingdiscovered what people do in the real-world driving situation Land and Horwood wouldbe unable to identify when lab-based performance was abnormal. Thus, by starting atthe real-world level, one is grounded in what people really do when they are not in thelab, and hence, one can determine what behaviours are, and are not, specific to thelaboratory environment.

In summary, the work by Land and colleagues provides a good example of how

complex real-world descriptions provide a series of systematically articulated observationsto which lab-based investigations can be linked and validated. Once real-worldobservations are made, the laboratory-based approach can then be applied to evaluate



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and study real-world behaviour by systematically imposing control. In this way, it ispossible for Cognitive Ethology investigations to guide laboratory investigations. Without

such guidance, lab-based investigations run the real risk of moving furtherand further away from everyday situations and studying behaviours and theoreticalconceptualizations that are meaningful only to the artificial environments that giverise to them.

Finally, it is also worth noting that the Cognitive Ethology research approachprovides a way for the research enterprise to be immediately and effectively self-

correcting. This is because if people begin to behave differently in the laboratory thanin real life, for instance, no longer using the tangent point while cornering in asimulator, the investigator is alerted to the fact that there is something in the laboratorythat fails to capture what people really do in the real world. This sensitivity to whether a

laboratory environment is, or is not, able to scale up to the natural world is absent whenone applies the current operating standard of conducting laboratory research first inisolation from any systematic naturalistic observation.

Personal and subpersonal levels of explanation

Following Dennett (1969, 1978; see also Pessoa, Thompson, & Noe, 1998) we believeit is important to distinguish between two levels of explanation referred to asthe personal level and the subpersonal level. Personal-level explanations focus on

describing and understanding the person as a whole organism interacting with his orher environment. Here the focus is both on what the active, engaged person is doing inthe environment and what information is available to that person to supportpurposeful, functional behaviour. In contrast, subpersonal-level explanations involvedescribing and understanding the person in terms of the internal organization andprocesses of the brain. Here the focus is on the brain mechanisms that subserve

cognition, what information is available to those mechanisms, and how thesemechanisms process the information.

Laboratory studies of cognition typically focus on explaining behaviour at the

subpersonal level in terms of the mind/brain mechanisms that underlie cognition.A good example of attention studies aimed at a subpersonal level of explanation isprovided by studies of covert attention (e.g. Posner, 1978). Covert visual attention refersto the selection that occurs without movement of the eyes. In other words, covertattention is a selection mechanism within the mind/brain and it is often believed to besubsumed by several neural networks (e.g. Posner & Raichle, 1998), with the midbrainresponsible for the movement of attention, the thalamus controlling the engagement ofattention, and the parietal lobe managing the disengagement of covert spatial attention.Similarly, the standard box and arrow diagrams that identify attention as a stage or

process in an information-processing framework (see Pashler, 1998) and the variousbrain areas that have been identified in neuroimaging studies as being relevant toattention (Corbetta & Shulman, 2002) are all explanations of attention at a subpersonallevel. Subpersonal explanations often aim to explain cognitive behaviour by assumingthat cognitive processes and their associated neural activations are relatively invariantacross different background conditions.

Though most studies of cognition focus on uncovering subpersonal explanations of

human cognition and performance, there are good reasons to believe that such a level ofexplanation is not sufficient. First, subpersonal explanations often do not provide asatisfying answer as to why cognitive performance is how it is. Second, subpersonal



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explanations fail to explain how cognitive performance relates to other cognitivesystems. Third, subpersonal explanation fails to recognize that cognition is inherently

distributed among multiple individuals (e.g. shared attention during reading or problemsolving) and the environmental context (e.g. use of memory aids like a personal digitalassistant (PDA) or a pilots use of cockpit gauges). In each case, the shortcomings of thesubpersonal account are addressed by a personal-level explanation. We illustrate thesepoints below.

Visual search asymmetry refers to the finding that looking for an object is not equally

efficient when the role of target and distractor is reversed in a search display. Forexample, in Figure 1 search is less efficient when the white-topped item is the target andthe black-topped items are distractors (as shown) than when this relation is reversed.To experience this effect, simply turn Figure 1 upside down and look for the target. The

target is now the black-topped item and it stands out conspicuously among white-topped distractors.

Why should an apparently trivial feature difference between target and distractors,such as which is white on top and black on the bottom, have such a profound effect onsearch performance? A subpersonal explanation will typically sidestep this largerquestion and point to a different neural pattern of activation for the two different searchconditions or propose a mechanism at some level of the information-processinghighway. Yet, such explanations do not provide an answer to the original and biggerquestion of why?.

To provide this answer, researchers reach out to a personal level of explanation,grounding their account on how people interact with their everyday environments.Thus, they propose that human vision is biased to expect a scene to be lit from overhead

because in the real world there is a single sun that shines overhead illuminating objectsfrom the top (Ramachandran, 1988; van Zoest, Giesbrecht, Enns, & Kingstone, 2006).Specifically, the effect of such lighting in a three-dimensional environment is to produceshading gradients in the resulting image. Objects that are uniform in their surfacecoloration and generally convex will tend to be lighter at the top, where the surfaceshave a more direct access to the light source, and darker at the bottom, where light isless able to reach the surface. A bias to interpret the meaning of these patterns ofluminance is thus used to explain why search difficulty varies in Figure 1, where theitems can be interpreted as being influenced by overhead lighting. It also explains why

the search asymmetry in Figure 1 favoured the black-topped target, as this runs againstthe standard expectation of scene shading. Thus, one finds that the personal-levelexplanation complements, and ultimately grounds, the subpersonal explanation.

A second example is simpler, but no less compelling. It is well accepted thatattention can be drawn to many different changes to stimulus features colour, shape,motion, luminance, and presentation of a new object in the visual field. Importantly,some of these features are more effective than others at attracting attention, for examplea luminance change is generally more effective than a colour change in attractingattention. One explanation, a subpersonal account, would interpret these differences in

terms of inherent differences in neural signal properties. For instance, light or motionchanges are more effective in attracting attention than colour or form change becausethe magnocellular visual pathway (which is concerned with processing luminance andmotion) is more rapid than the parvocellular visual pathway (which is concerned with

processing colour and form). According to this subpersonal viewpoint, a new objectshould have no privileged influence on attentional orienting, over and above theinfluence of its constituent features. However, this is not the case. The presence of a



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new object is more effective in attracting attention than any other feature change(Yantis, 1993).

Why do new objects exert such a powerful influence? To answer this question

investigators have again gone beyond the subpersonal level of explanation and provideda personal-level account that is based on the relevance that different features play inan individuals everyday life (Enns, Austen, Di Lollo, Rauschenberger, & Yantis, 2001).

Figure 1. Search is harder when the white-topped item is the target and the black-topped items are

distractors (as shown) than when this relation is reversed. This effect can be experienced by turning the

figure upside down and looking for the black-topped target which stands out conspicuously among

white-topped distractors. This black-topped target is thought to be easy to find because it runs against

our everyday expectation of scene shading where items are normally lit from the top, for example, by a

single sun overhead.



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They note that while feature changes like colour and shape are important, they are notas fundamentally important to an individual as is the appearance of a new object. Why?

Because feature changes may be considered as updates to a known stimulus object,whereas the appearance of a new object introduces an unknown item into the scene,one which must first be identified, for example, as a predator or a prey. Thus, one findsagain that subpersonal explanations do not provide a compelling understanding of whya cognitive process operates as it does. That account is provided by a complementarypersonal-level explanation.

Subpersonal explanations of cognition, for instance ones which identify cognitiveprocesses solely as information-processing mechanisms within the brain, also fail toprovide a satisfactory explanation of more systemic aspects of cognition such as thesorts of attentional behaviour that emerge when two or more individuals are

communicating or are engaged in a common task. Yet, such collaborative attention iscritical in our everyday lives, particularly in safety critical sectors such as aviation.In December 1972, Eastern Airlines Flight 401 crashed into the Florida Everglades. Thereason: Three experienced professional pilots simultaneously focused their attention ona small malfunctioning indicator light and no one was paying attention to the fact thatthe autopilot had disengaged. As a result of this catastrophic failure of collaborativeattention, no one was flying the plane (Vicente, 2003). The important point of thisexample for present purposes is that the cognitive dynamics that ultimately led to thecrash of Flight 401 are difficult to explain based on subpersonal mechanisms that are

localized within the mind/brain of an individual. The clear failure of attention occurredas a result of the interaction between individuals and was therefore distributed amongindividuals and their immediate environment. Such distributed cognition (see Hutchins,

1995) requires a different level of explanation, a personal-level account that includes aconsideration of multiple individuals, their current goals, abilities, and beliefs, as well astheir specific situational demands.

Collaborative attention has already been establishedas a critical factor for child learningand development (e.g. Tomasello, 1995; Dunham & Moore, 1995). For instance, numerousstudies of joint attention in human infants has shown that 1-year old infants are able tofollow the direction of gaze of others (e.g. Butterworth & Corchran, 1980; for a review seeTomasello, 1995) and that children as young as 2 years make inferences about where aparent is attending when acquiring language skills (Tomasello & Todd, 1983). Such joint

attention has even been linked to development of theory-of-mind in children (e.g. Charmanetal., 2000), arguably oneof themore criticalcharacteristics of well-adjusted adults.As withthe crew members of Flight 401, the cognitive dynamics that underlie joint attention inchildren and their parents, or any two or more individuals for that matter, cannot besatisfactorily explained solely with reference to subpersonal mind/brain mechanismswithin an individual. A personal level of explanation is again required.

To reiterate, the personal level of explanation focuses on understanding humancognition as operating in service of individuals as they interact with an ever-changingreal-world environment. The specific focus is on explaining cognition in terms of (a) the

behaviour of whole embodied people and their interaction with their environment andothers around them (Pessoa et al., 1998) and (b) peoples subjective experiences, goals,and beliefs (see Jack & Roepstorff, 2003). Rather than solely construing cognition as aneural or information-processing system, explanations of cognitive performance at the

personal level construe cognition as an overt system involving an embodied individual,an environment (which includes other people), and the persons goals, purposes,and beliefs.



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Although the personal and subpersonal are two distinct ways of describing andunderstanding human cognition, they are clearly related and can, in a complementary

manner, enrich our overall understanding of human cognition. For instance, a personal-level approach to the study of attention can assist the subpersonal approach reach itsgoal of understanding how attention operates in everyday settings. Specifically, byconcretely describing how cognition functions at the personal level it can become clearwhich situations and variables are important to study at a subpersonal level.

We do not mean to suggest that in the past subpersonal studies have been conducted

completely without any guidance from personal-level observations. Indeed, mostresearchers use their own informal personal-level observations to guide their research tosome extent. However, this is certainly not the kind of personal-level guidance that weare suggesting here. In fact, there are several reasons to believe that this type of informal

guidance has led subpersonal investigations further away from the real world ratherthan closer to it. First, a researchers informal observations are often guided primarily bythe constraints of their laboratory paradigm or a particular theoretical framework towhich they adhere. Such observations are inherently biased and serve to furtherperpetuate the existing views (Kingstone, Smilek, Ristic, Friesen, & Eastwood, 2003).Thus, while such informal observations give the appearance that subpersonal researchis being guided by real-world descriptions, in actuality, the subpersonal framework maybe constraining and overly determining personal-level observations. In addition,informal observations may not be representative of many of the possible outcomes in

the real world and therefore can generate laboratory paradigms that reflect and entrenchthese limitations. Without a systematic, clear, and extensive articulation of howindividuals behave in the real world, it is unclear how one can evaluate the merit of

either the informal observations made by researchers or, more importantly, whether thelaboratory findings are consistent with how people behave in the real world. For thesereasons we propose that informal personal-level observations are not sufficient to guidesubpersonal research and that personal-level descriptions of attention are necessary. It isprecisely this systematic articulation of cognition at the personal level that is currentlylacking.

In addition to guiding subpersonal studies, personal-level explanations can alsoreveal the reasons why subpersonal mechanisms function as they do. Consider thesearch asymmetry and attention capture by new objects examples discussed earlier.

Though, of course, there must be some subpersonal brain mechanisms that underliethese behaviours, the reasons why those mechanisms function the way that they do onlybecomes apparent when one considers the behaviour of the individual at the personallevel.

A similar argument has recently been made by Findlay and Gilchrist (2003) regardingthe function of covert attention. They argue that covert attention, as it is understood inthe lab-based settings (i.e. orienting without any concomitant eye-movements), does notseem to serve any important purpose. They give several reasons. First, spatial cueingleads to relatively small increases in the speed of responses to a cued target, being often

less than 40 ms. Second, the speed with which covert attention is shifted is notsubstantially faster than overt shifts of attention. And third, covert attention is not anecessary explanation of the apparent limitations in capacity because selection canoccur at many levels of the system. According to Findlay and Gilchrist (2003), the

purpose and function of covert attention becomes clear only when covert attention isconsidered as part of a larger attention system which involves the act of overt eye-movements as individuals select information from their environment.



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Collectively, the ideas presented in this section suggest the assertion that cognitiveprocesses, like covert attention, cannot be fully understood at the subpersonal level

unless the explanation is grounded in a personal-level understanding of peoples overtcognitive behaviour and their experiences, beliefs, and intentions as they selectinformation in their everyday environments. We explore this proposal in the nextsection.

Cognitive Ethology and subjective experienceConsistent with our position that a personal-level description and explanation iscritically important to scientific investigations, we suggest that it is essential that oneseek to observe and describe the subjective experiences of individuals as well as theirovertly observable (objective) experiences. It should go without saying that subjectiveexperience is at the heart of cognitive performance in complex natural settings. Forinstance, we select objects in our environment to become conscious of them and thento flexibly interact with them. Yet, laboratory studies of cognition rely heavily onmeasures of objective behaviour and often ignore subjective experience. For example,studies of attention using the Posner cueing paradigm measure spatial attention by

measuring peoples objective response time and accuracy as they detect a targetstimulus. In fact, measuring peoples reaction time and accuracy as they detect, identify,or localize simple stimuli constitutes one of the primary measures used in studies of

attention. Other objective measures range from monitoring eye-movements to recordingbrain activations. We refer to these objective measures of behaviour as third-personmeasures because they can be observed by someone other than the individual involvedin the behaviour (see Varela & Shear, 1999).

Subjective reports, that is,first-person measures of personal experiences and beliefs,are largely ignored in cognition for several reasons. First, there is the general belief,

which appears to be a remnant of behaviourisms objection to the way that structuralistsused introspection, that subjective reports are not reliable and replicable acrossindividuals. Second, it is thought that introspecting about subjective experience might

change and bias subjective experience (see Lutz & Thomas, 2003). Third, subjectivereports are often believed to be vulnerable to experimenter demands. Fourth,subpersonal mechanisms of cognitive performance, which are the primary interest ofexperimental psychologists, are assumed to operate below conscious awareness. Finally,on occasion, even when peoples subjective reports agree across individuals, they maybe inconsistent with their behaviour (Hurlbert & Heavey, 2001; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977).For this impressive list of reasons, subjective reports have fallen by the wayside.

However, perhaps these concerns are not as compelling as they first appear to be.After all, many of the criticisms levelled against the use of subjective reports are general

experimental problems that also apply to objective measures of performance. Considerthe first criticism above, that subjective reports are unreliable. In actuality, perceivedunreliability of subjective reports in the structuralist research programme was dueprimarily to the problem of inducing the same mental states in many observers wherethe states were sufficiently stable to allow consistent judgments across observers(Ericsson, 2003, p. 5, italics added). Therefore, the problem was not in the method ofintrospection but rather with the stability of the experience. The reader will notice, as

we have noted in the first section of this paper, that this same issue ofstability/invariance also plagues objective third-person laboratory studies of cognitiveperformance.



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Also not unique to subjective reports is the second concern noted above, namelythat introspection might change or bias subjective experience. The fact that studying a

factor might change that factor is true of laboratory studies of mechanisms as well. Infact, this idea forms a core reason to our claim that mechanisms studied in the laboratorymight not operate in the same way in the real world. Most generally, this is an instance ofthe well-established Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, an epistemological limitationthat plagues many scientific enterprises and is certainly not unique to reports ofsubjective experience. Similarly, the third objection, that subjective reports are easily

biased by experimenter demands, can also apply to objective measures of performance,for instance studies of cognitive processes of race (e.g. Gehring, Karpinski, & Hilton,2003). Therefore, in these regards, subjective reports and objective measures arevulnerable to the same possible shortcomings. It is also worth noting that over the past

several decades, there have been considerable advances in the development of first-person methodologies that minimize the extent to which introspective reports biasconscious experience and the extent to which they are susceptible to experimenterdemands (see Dennett, 2003; Ericsson, 2003; Ericsson & Simon, 1980; Lutz &Thompson, 2003).

The latter two criticisms of subjective reports are also not as problematic as onemight first be led to believe. The fourth concern was that subjective reports are notuseful for studying cognition because people do not have conscious access tosubpersonal mechanisms, which likely operate below conscious awareness. This seems

reasonable and true. But, as we have noted above, a subpersonal level of explanationalone cannot be expected to provide a meaningful explanation of cognitive performancein complex real-world settings. At a personal level of explanation, subjective reports can

be extremely useful because they can provide direct access to peoples beliefs,intentions, goal, and actions, which are critical for that level of explanation (see Lutz &Thompson, 2003). Finally, the fact that subjective reports and objective behaviourdisagree with each other (see Nisbett & Wilson, 1977) occurs only in specific situationsand is certainly not the rule across all situations (see Lutz & Thompson, 2003; Smilek,Eastwood, Reynolds, & Kingstone, 2007, In press; Wilson, 2003).

Thus, under closer consideration, it appears that subjective and objective reportsmay share a common and imperfect foundation. In fact, it could be argued thatsubjective reports are in some ways more primary than indirect objective measures of

cognition. Indeed, some form of introspective methodology is an integral part of allobjective methods (Jack & Ropstroff, 2002, 2003). For instance, experiments are oftendesigned based on the subjective experience of the experimenter. Most of us have beentrained to consider our preferred paradigms and tasks in a manner that enables us tointrospect on how one might behave and to make predictions and gain insights aboutthe resulting data. Similarly, experimental instructions involve an interpersonalexchange between experimenter and subject in which the experimenter provides theparticipant with a model of how they should carry out the experimental task (Jack &Roepstorff, 2003, p. vii). Data are also sometimes understood or validated on the basis of

informal interviews following an experiment, such as whether a stimulus wasconsciously experienced or not. Subjective experiences are, therefore, inherent toobjective experimental studies of cognition.

Our position is that subjective reports represent an extremely powerful and valid

tool for exploring personal-level explanations of cognitive performance. First, they canprovide direct access to participants explicit goals, intentions, and behaviour ineveryday situations. Reasons (e.g., 1979, 1984) exploration of peoples slips of attention



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is a good example of this use of subjective reports. Reason conducted several diarystudies in which large groups of participants provided detailed reports of their everyday

slips of attention (e.g. putting the milk in the cupboard and the cereal in the fridge).Reason provides many examples of reports of such attentions slips that simply could notbe measured using objective methods; only the subjective reports clearly captured anindividuals goals and intention as well as the details of the events that occurred atunexpected and relatively infrequent times in everyday life (which is when attentionslips often occur). Based on his analysis of these subjective reports of attention slips,

Reason was able to create a classification system for actions not as planned and also putforth a compelling theory about how such slips come about. Surprisingly little has beendone to follow up this interesting work on attention slips (for exceptions see Cheyne,Carriere, & Smilek, 2006; Robertson, 2003; Robertson, Manly, Andrade, Baddeley, &

Yiend, 1997).Second, subjective reports are useful in that they can provide important insights into

differences in cognitive behaviour across individuals. A good example of this use ofsubjective reports is provided by the pioneering work of Broadbent and colleagues(Broadbent, Cooper, FitzGerald, & Parkes, 1982). Broadbent et al. developed theCognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) to measure individual differences in failures ofperception, memory, and attention. They found that the peoples CFQ scores arerelatively stable over long periods of time and that people with high CFQ scores(i.e. highly prone to cognitive failures) are more vulnerable to showing negative effects

in stressful situations.Third, subjective reports can reveal the types of cognitive strategies people

are trying to implement in various situations. This can help investigators gain

insight into how participants may be performing their tasks and, in doing so,gain new insights into their data. A good example appears in Marcels (1983) classicexploration of unconscious influences of briefly presented stimuli. Based on thesubjective reports of his participants, Marcel was able to divide his participants intothose that were passive viewers and those that used active strategies. The resultsshowed that the strength of the unconscious influence of a briefly presentedstimulus was greater when the participants passively view the displays, as opposedto when they actively looked for the stimulus (for similar demonstrations see Smilek,Enns, Eastwood, & Merikle, 2006; Snodgrass, Shevrin, & Kopka, 1993; Van Selst &

Merikle, 1993).Finally, subjective reports can be useful for helping to generate experimental

hypotheses. Consider, for instance, recent studies of grapheme-colour synaesthesia, acondition in which achromatic letters and numbers automatically elicit specific andconsistent colour experiences (Dixon, Smilek, Cudahy, & Merikle, 2000; Mattingley,Rich, Yelland, & Bradshaw, 2001). Because synaesthesia is principally a subjectivecondition, defined by an unusual conscious experience, the majority of the studiesinvestigating this condition are motivated or based on the subjective reports of thesynaesthetes (see Smilek & Dixon, 2002).

In addition to noting the utility of measuring subjective experience, we wish tohighlight that first-person reports of subjective experience and third-person measures ofobject behaviour can be integrated in a complementary fashion, dovetailing with thepersonal and subpersonal levels of explanation outlined previously. In this way, first- and

third-person measures can be combined in a synergistic way so that they mutuallyconstrain and support our understandings of cognitive performance both in real-worldand lab-based settings.



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Cognitive Ethology and the future

Based on the foregoing considerations, we wish to make several recommendations forfuture studies of cognition. We formulate these recommendations as an alternativeapproach to the study of cognition; we have referred to this alternative as CognitiveEthology. The primary goal of this approach is to understand the functioning of humancognitionin thereal world.This approach is based on thefollowing important assumptions:

(1) Invariance: The dynamics of cognition are, at least in part, contextualized. Variability

in cognitive processing that arises from contextual differences is important tounderstand. Only by explaining such variability will meaningful and stable cognitiveprocesses be discovered.

(2) Control: Important insights into cognition will be gained when individuals behave inan unconstrained and uncontrolled manner in their natural environments. The goal isto measure naturally occurring variance rather than the variance that emerges fromcontrolling the system.

(3) Cognition as a distributed system: Cognition is a non-linear systemic process.Important aspects of cognition will only emerge when embodied individuals areconsidered as a part of a system that involves their natural environment (includingother individuals).

(4) Subjective reports: Subjective reports provide a direct measure of peoples consciousexperiences, goals, intentions, and beliefs pertaining to their attentional behaviour ineveryday environments.

The Cognitive Ethology approach also makes the following recommendations for future

studies of cognition:

(1) The initial job of the researcher is to observe and describe what people do in thereal world in order to specify the domain of inquiry. Such observation should beundertaken in a systematic empirical manner rather than arm chair observing.These observations will form a much needed description of cognition as itoperates in real-world settings.

(2) The conceptual language used to describe human cognition should, initially, begrounded in theconceptsand language that areused by peoplein their everyday life.

(3) Studies of human cognition should integrate measures of both objective (third-person) behaviour as well as subjective (first-person) experiences. First-personsubjective reports should be combined in a mutually constraining fashion with

third-person objective observations of behaviour.

Ultimately, Cognitive Ethology should be combined with other empirical approaches(e.g. laboratory-based neuroscience) in order to arrive at a fuller understanding of thefunctioning of human cognition.

On the first glance, it might appear to some that what we are proposing is simply arehashing of older ideas. While we fully acknowledge that our notion of CognitiveEthology is grounded in earlier thinking, we nevertheless believe that CognitiveEthology represents a unique and critically important synthesis of previous ideas.To appreciate the uniqueness of what we call the Cognitive Ethology approach, it is

helpful to contrast this approach with other research approaches that have emergedthroughout the history of psychology, including: (a) information processing andcognitive neuroscience (Miller, 1956), (b) the ethological approach (e.g. Carthy, 1966;



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Hutt & Hutt, 1970), (c) the ecological approach (e.g. Barker & Wright, 1955; Wright,1967), and (d) Gibsons (1950, 1979) ecological optics.

Information processing and cognitive neuroscience

In the forgoing discussion, we have articulated how our Cognitive Ethology approachdiffers and is complementary with the common laboratory-based approach to studyingcognition. This common approach to which we have been referring is a combination of

the information-processing approach and the cognitive neuroscience approach. Theseapproaches share in common with Cognitive Ethology the general goal of understandinghuman cognition and behaviour as it occurs in the real world. The difference betweenapproaches arises when one considers the assumptions underlying the research

strategies used to achieve this goal. At the heart of information processing and cognitiveneuroscience are the assumptions of invariance and control that we have articulatedearlier. As noted above, the Cognitive Ethology approach rejects these assumptions. Theinformation-processing and cognitive neuroscience approaches seek to provide asubpersonal explanation of behaviour, whereas Cognitive Ethology seeks to also providean explanation of behaviour at the personal level. Finally, unlike information processingand cognitive neuroscience, Cognitive Ethology places a strong emphasis on peoplessubjective reports and personal insights into their performance.

The ethological approach

This approach, which gained prominence during the 1960s, focuses on describingbehaviour patterns of humans and animals in their natural contexts (e.g. Carthy, 1966;see Hutt & Hutt, 1970 for a review). The focus on behaviour patterns in natural contextsgained prominence because it became apparent that classical behaviourism failed

miserably in certain instances when applied beyond the laboratory (see Breland &Breland, 1961). Our approach and the classic ethological approach are similar in thatthey both seek to provide a detailed description of behaviour as organisms interact with

and in their natural environment. Furthermore, both approaches consider it essentialthat natural behaviour be observed and described as it normally occurs rather than beingmodified or probed in artificially controlled settings. In fact, these similarities are whatprompted us to include the term ethology when giving a name to our approach.

There are, however, several critical differences between the two approaches. Thefirst and primary difference concerns one goal of our approach, which is to relate theobservations to classically cognitive concepts such as attention and memory. Ourapproach views these cognitive concepts as being contextualized processes revealed bythe interaction of an individual with his or her environment. In contrast, classical

ethology focuses on overt behaviour (i.e. generating an ethogram as a starting-point)and does not seek to draw inferences about cognition. The second difference betweenthe approaches concerns the role of subjective reports. An important definingcharacteristic of the ethological approach it that it rejects inferences about subjectiveexperience as well as the validity of subjective reports, insisting that behaviour bedescribed without inferring intention, motivation, and cognition to an animal (Carthy,1966; Hutt & Hutt, 1970). In contrast, our approach considers participants subjective

reports and beliefs to be critical for understanding cognition and behaviour. The thirddifference between the approaches concerns the balance in emphasis between thebehaviour on the one hand and the environment on the other. Unlike the ethological



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emphasis on behaviour over environmental situation, our approach seeks to take amore balanced focus on individual behaviour and situational factors. Finally, our

approach is not committed to several issues central to classical ethology, such as howbehaviour might be shaped by evolutionary pressures and whether behaviours areinnate or learned.

The ecological approach

Another approach which bears some similarity to Cognitive Ethology is the ecologicalapproach (e.g. Barker & Wright, 1955; Wright, 1967; see Hutt & Hutt, 1970 for areview). This approach seeks to understand how the environment (i.e. habitat) relatesto, or determines, behaviour. The critical similarity between the ecological approach

and Cognitive Ethology pertains to the idea that characterizing situations is essential forunderstanding human behaviour. However, there are several important differences. Oneimportant difference between approaches involves the relative amount of emphasisplaced on the environment and individual (see Hutt & Hutt, 1970). Specifically, theecological approach emphasizes the role of the environment over the role of theindividual. In contrast, our approach does not wish to allow the environment toovershadow either the individual or his/her behaviour. Another important differencebetween approaches pertains to the role of subjective reports and personal insights ofthe participants. In particular, the ecological approach limits the discussion of mental

states (or attitudes) to those inferred from observable behaviour and does notrecognize subjective reports as important and valid data. In contrast, Cognitive Ethologyconsiders subjective reports and observable behaviour to be equally important.

Ecological optics

Gibsons (1950, 1979) ecological optics is based on the idea that perception is drivenby the structure of the environment. According to Gibson (1959, p. 459), perception isa function of stimulation and stimulation is a function of the environment. This implies

that perception is directly a function of the environment. Because of this strongemphasis on the environment as a determinant of perception, the framework isessentially ecological.

The similarities between Cognitive Ethology and Gibsons ecological optics aremany. First, both approaches agree that cognitive concepts cannot be properlyunderstood without considering the fact that participants are embedded in anenvironment and that cognition is not independent of the environment. Second, bothapproaches reject the assumption of stability. Gibson believed that the problem withtraditional psychophysics was that it focused on how the sensory receptors respond to

discreet stable stimulation. Gibson observed that the stimulation of receptors and thepresumed sensations : : : are variable and changing in the extreme, unless they arecontrolled in the laboratory (Gibson, 1966, p. 3). This keen observation, which alsoimplied a limitation of laboratory studies, formed the basis for the critical idea thatchange across time and situations must be understood and integrated within atheoretical framework (see Gibson, 1959, p. 464465). We agree with Gibson that theinitial research focus should be on naturally occurring variability rather than variability

that is controlled, eliminated, manipulated, or created in the laboratory.There are, however, at least three critical differences between Cognitive Ethologyand Gibsons ecological optics. First, whereas Gibsons framework emphasizes the



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role of environment with minimal or no consideration of the characteristics of theindividual, Cognitive Ethology places equal emphasis on the characteristics of the

individual and those of the situation. A second difference pertains to the use ofintrospection and participants subjective reports. Consistent with a greater focuson the environment than the individual, Gibson believed that introspection is only ameans of generating hypotheses and did not consider subjective reports to beimportant data in their own right. Gibson writes: introspection, however unbiased,is no more than a guide to the study of perception (Gibson, 1959, p. 461). In

contrast, and as we have emphasized, Cognitive Ethology considers subjectiveinsights as important data in their own right and seeks to ground cognitive conceptsin peoples everyday understanding of those concepts. The third important differencebetween the approaches concerns the types of cognitive phenomena they seek to

explain. Gibsons theory provides a theory about the point of contact between thesense organs and an energy flux in the world. Thus, perception was explained interms of a basic stimulus structure such as the optical texture in the array of light.It is difficult to see how such a level of explanation could ever provide insightsinto more complex human behaviour. Cognitive Ethology, on the other hand, seeksto directly address the higher level aspects of cognition that are beyond the scopeof Gibsons ecological optics. In some sense, Cognitive Ethology takes off whereGibsons theory ends.

Common objections to Cognitive Ethology

When discussing Cognitive Ethology with our colleagues, we have noticed severalcommon issues or objections that have been raised. Here we address four mainconcerns that have been brought to our attention.

(1) How does Cognitive Ethology go beyond previous calls for more ecologically

valid research?

Cognitive Ethology extends previous calls for ecological validity in at least twoimportant ways. First, by articulating the principles of lab-based research and theiralternatives (e.g. laboratory vs. naturalistic research, personal vs. subpersonal levelsof explanation, subjective vs. objective measures, experiment vs. folk grounding ofconcepts) we have gone substantially beyond previous calls for more ecologicalvalidity in psychological research (Neisser, 1976; Kingstone et al., 2003). Indeed, ourdiscussion of the principles underlying laboratory studies and their alternativessuggests a possible reason why previous exhortations for ecological validity have nottaken hold. Our speculation is that, while seeking to be more ecological, researchers

have maintained a laboratory-based subpersonal focus. In doing so, they adhered toassumptions (e.g. invariance and control) that are, at the core, incompatible with theecological goal. This has resulted in the general view that ecological validity issomething that cannot be attained and has created a degree of resignation to, andcomfort with, artificial laboratory studies. We believe that the incompatibility betweenecological goals and the underlying research assumptions may have gone largelyunnoticed because the assumptions and their implications for ecological validity have

not been clearly articulated. We hope that this paper will help to provide some clarityin this regard and also affirm that ecological validity can, and indeed should, beattained using the personal-level real-world approach that we outlined.



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(2) Does the Cognitive Ethology framework suggest that cognition should not be

studied in laboratory settings?

The short answer to this question is no. Laboratory studies of cognition can certainlycontribute to our understanding of human cognition. However, it is our proposal thatlaboratory studies are not likely to provide accurate understandings unless they are firstgrounded in systematic observations of how cognition operates in real-world settings.The goal of Cognitive Ethology is to provide the much needed body of observations onthe basis of which existing laboratory findings can be validated and future laboratory

experiments can be grounded. Ultimately, we believe that studies based on the CognitiveEthology approach, and laboratory studies ranging from psychophysics to the cognitiveneuroscience, can be combined in a complementary fashion and, in doing so, will lead toa much clearer and accurate understanding of human cognition in the real world.

(3) Is Cognitive Ethology just another name for human factors engineering or applied

psychology?

Cognitive Ethology is related yet distinct from human factors engineering and appliedpsychology. The primary goal of human factors engineering is to create or spawn newtechnology (see Vicente, 2003). Similarly, applied psychology seeks to solve specificreal-world problems. In contrast to these approaches, Cognitive Ethology is not directlyinterested in solving a problem in the real world or in generating new technological

innovations, though one would hope that such innovations would certainly emergefrom this line of research. Rather, Cognitive Ethology focuses on what is typicallyreferred to as basic research in that it seeks to understand human behaviour for thesake of having a better understanding and not for a direct application or technologicalinnovation. Thus, as opposed to human factors engineering and applied research, attimes Cognitive Ethology investigations might focus on issues that do not have animmediately apparent or direct application.

(4) The Cognitive Ethology approach will not work because it is impossible to

sufficiently control all extraneous variables in real-world settings

This is perhaps the most common objection raised against studying cognition in thereal world. And, it is a main reason why researchers have gone further and furtherinto their laboratories and have studied cognition in highly controlled paradigms(e.g. Broadbent, 1971; Posner, 1978). We argue, however, that the concern that humancognition cannot be studied in real-world settings, because it is not possible to controlnaturally occurring variability, is misguided. Though it is clearly the case that it isdifficult (if not impossible) to run a controlled experiment in natural settings, it is

worth noting that such controlled experiments are only one part of the wholescientific enterprise. Many branches of science, such as biology and physics, have beenbased on decades, if not centuries, of systematic observation and description ofnaturally occurring events. In these sciences, experimentation may only occur afteryears of systematic observation. And, in some sciences, such as astronomy, observationand description remain the only way of doing research. Placed in the context of otherresearch domains, it seems rather absurd that experimental psychology in general, and

cognitive research in particular, has not conducted systematic observations ordescriptions of their area of inquiry (see Koch, 1999). Psychology is unique in that ithas, almost from its inception, been handed the experimental method without a clear



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description of its subject matter. It is precisely this void in observation and descriptionof naturally occurring cognitive phenomena that Cognitive Ethology can fill. Cognitive

Ethology seeks to observe and measure the naturally occurring variability related tocognition in real-world settings in order to lay the foundational observations on whichtheories and experimentation can be built.

Concluding comments

Given the many considerations that have been presented in this paper, someconclusions are obvious. First, experimental simplification of a real-world situation is areasonable research tactic when it follows careful real-world investigation.

Second, real-world and lab-based investigations are complementary, not competing,research approaches. Each offers a level of explanation that is outside the realm of theother, with personal-level explanations, including subjective reports, often providingthe foundational answers to the big why and how questions that are central to

investigations of cognitive phenomena. We have also noted that personal-levelexplanations also explain cognition as operating in service of an individuals goals andneeds as they interact with a continually changing environment.

Third, the field needs fresh data that is drawn from real-world experiences andphenomena. We have identified research assumptions that embrace the principles ofvariance and situation, which we propose will help advance the field in its quest tounderstand and predict real-world cognition and behaviour.

Fourth, and finally, we have outlined a new research approach, called CognitiveEthology, that makes concrete our ideas and which we hope will serve as a useful toolfor our colleagues future research efforts. We look forward to the constructive dialoguethat this article will stimulate and the other novel research approaches that will beborne from these efforts.

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