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Deutsche Fassung

— or: what I am doing when I am not online...

What do we do when we think? Due to its traditional preoccupation with internal mechanisms of information processing Cognitive Psychology has (mis?)understood this question as an investigation into the nature of thinking. My current research—which, hopefully, will eventually evolve into a PhD thesis—simply asks the same question with a slight shift in emphasis: What do we do when we think?

More precisely, I wonder how the exploitation of interactive resources (e.g., the availability of paper and pencil, a calculator, or our ability of focussing on or pointing at objects) alters and shapes our problem solving processes. Apart from theoretical implications these interactions between organism, tool, and task environment, promise to yield exciting applications. How, for example, does the specific program you are presently using to view this page (in interaction with its design) influence your perception and retention of its content?

I've addressed some issues related to this tantalizing, yet elusive project in various presentations:

(Note: I haven't been updating this list for a few years. Please contact me if you want slides of more recent presentations.)

• Empirical Investigations of Mathematical Skills [12.5MB]
  Cognitive Science Tutorial 2, PhiMSAMP-2 , Utrecht, Netherlands, October 19–21, 2007
• Thinking by Doing?  Non-pragmatic actions in problem-solving
  Invited research seminar at CREDIT , University of Nottingham, 05/12/2001.
  
• Towards a theory of learning by not doing
  School of Psychology Postgraduate Conference 2001, Gregynog, 27/10/2001.
• Addition as interactive problem solving
  Paper presented at the Twenty-third Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society , Edinburgh, 02/08/2001.

Cardiff's Research Group on Human Computer Interaction is an ideal environment to pursue these issues. (We are presently working on a more comprehensive web presentation — please be patient.)

Background: Before I converted to become a professional "problem solver" I have (in Freiburg and Princeton) carried out some work on human reasoning. In addition, I've been working as a free-lance computer journalist for a few years. Please refer to my list of publications or CV for details.

By the way: As my PhD is on problem solving, I'm sharing my job description with a certain James Bond 007: "I'm solving problems." One of the problems to be solved in the process of this PhD is to somehow find the time to actually write that dissertation...