Literacy and Education by James Paul Gee

Author:James Paul Gee [James Paul Gee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317577201
Publisher: Routledge

Experience and the Mind

In the 1980s one predominant view of the mind was that it was rather like a digital computer. The mind, like a digital computer, was an information processing device. It followed rules, stored generalizations, and logically deduced results. But during the 1980s a competing view was forming. This view—discussed in my book The Social Mind (1992)—came in different varieties. The version I will discuss here is often called “embodied cognition” (Barsalou 1999; Bergen 2012; Clark 1997; Gee 2004; Glenberg 1997).

Work on embodied cognition claims that the human mind does not learn by storing generalizations and abstractions. It learns via experience. Human long-term memory is nearly limitless and humans store the experiences they have had in their minds. They then use these experiences to prepare for future action. They do this by consulting their previous experiences to see if any are good guides for how to act and think in the new situation.

However, the mind does not store experience raw. When we have an experience (in the world or via media), we pay attention in certain ways. We foreground certain elements as important, we background other elements as less important, and we ignore some elements altogether. We edit our experiences via our attention (where we focus and don’t) and store them in the mind in this edited format. Of course, even if you and I have had a similar experience—even together—you may have edited that experience differently than I did. So you may well use it to plan, think, and act differently than I will.

But the experiences we humans store in our minds are not just like edited videotapes. Our minds are simulation devices. We don’t watch a video in our head. We act in our head. In fact, it is as if we have a video game engine in our head (Gee 2013). We can take elements from various experiences we have had (as edited) and combine them to role-play situations and even to create fantasy worlds.

We can role-play to prepare for future action. And you do not even have to play yourself in your mental simulations or games. You can role-play being yourself at a wedding, being one of several different selves you can enact in public, or even role-play being the bride or the minister. You can role-play what might happen if you got too drunk before giving the toast.

Let me give a concrete, though personal example. Say I am asked to give a very short talk—three minutes max. To me these short talks are much tougher than longer talks. There is little room for error. So I prepare these events, often even while I am waiting my turn on a panel, by playing in my head various possible talks, and think about how different types of audience members might respond positively or negatively. Sometimes, when I am in a bad mood, I envision how I could truly “piss off” everyone or certain types of people. I also imagine speaking as a linguist, an educator,

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