A distributed representation approach to group problem solving

Abstract

This article develops a theoretical framework of distributed representations to explore the representational properties in group problem solving. The basic principle of distributed representations is that the representational system of a group problem solving task is distributed across the representations of individuals, which together represent the abstract structure of the task. The framework was used to analyze the distributed representation of the Waitress and Orange task. From this analysis, an experiment was designed to examine group problem solving behaviors under different distributed representations. The experiment shows that (1) different distributed representations across two individuals produced dramatically different group problem solving behaviors, even if they had the same abstract structure; and (2) two minds could be better than, not different from, or even worse than one mind, depending on how representations were distributed across the two minds. These results further support the interactionist view of group problem solving, which is that the interactions among individuals can produce group cognitive properties that can neither be reduced to, nor be inferred from, the cognitive properties of individuals. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.