Epistemic actions
Overview
“Epistemic actions—physical actions that make mental computation easier, faster, or more reliable—are external actions that an agent performs to change his or her own computation state” as defined by Kirsh and Maglio (1994) in a study done showing how Tetris can be solved by performing actions out in the world than inside of the head. Essentially, epistemic actions are the things that acts or actions performed that aids in reducing the cognitive processing required to complete a task or solve a problem, a way to use the environment to help alleviate extraneous cognitive load. As it is a physical performance that happens in an external environment that aids cognition, it is a concept that has largely been discussed with regards to both embedded cognition, which “refers to the adaptive flexibility of cognitive processes during interaction with the environment” (Pouw, van Gog, and Paas, 2014); and embodied cognition which is a perspective that believes “cognitive processes are deeply rooted in the body’s interactions with the world” (Wilson, 2002).
Evidence
Kirsh and Maglio(S) studied players playing the interactive video game of Tetris where they in order to better understand and differentiate between actions that complete a task with pragmatic actions “bring the agent closer to his or her physical goals,” and epistemic actions that leveraged the environment to off-load cognitive processing. What they found was that as the Tetris shapes came down, in order to problem-solve if the shape is going to fit the already established blocks that have fallen, the advanced players rotated the Tetris shapes physically rather than mentally more times than the less advanced players to decide which of the shapes would best fit and how would the blocks would best fit (Pous, van Gog, and Paas, 2014).
Wilson cites another example of epistemic actions from a 1997 study that recorded eye movements of participants who were asked to rearrange and reproduce colored blocks on a computer using randomly scattered blocks and dragging them into a designated area to arrange them all while under time constraints. The study showed that the participants’ eye movements referred back to the model colored blocks during strategic moments such as the color of the block and its placement in the order (2002).