The nature of creative engagement with computers and software presents a number of challenges to 4E cognition and requires the development of analytical frameworks that can encompass cognitive processes as they extend across material and informational realms. Here I argue that an enactive view of mind allows for better understanding of digital practice by advancing a dynamic, transactional, and...

There is a national expectation in Australia that ICT will be used to increase student engagement with learning. With increased ICT use comes increasing claims of engagement but only limited research to demonstrate that engagement has occurred. In a pilot project to integrate ICT into learning at an independent K-12 school in regional NSW, teachers and pre-service teachers were teamed with univ...

Cognitive decline in aging can negatively impact quality of life in the elderly. However, studies have shown that elderly engaged in advanced activities of daily living (AADLs) can maintain or enhance global cognitive function or specific domains. Objective To investigate the relationship between engagement in AADLs and domains of cognition in elderly from seven different locations in Brazil....

There is an increasing amount of evidence that during mental fatigue, shifts in motivation drive performance rather than reductions in finite mental energy. So far, studies that investigated such an approach have mainly focused on cognitive indicators of task engagement that were measured during controlled tasks, offering limited to no alternative stimuli. Therefore it remained unclear whether ...

Much of the research on children’s reading has focused on cognitive aspects such as word recognition and comprehension. Major syntheses published in the 1980s and 1990s devoted considerable attention to cognitive processes in reading (Barr, Kamil, Mosenthal, & Pearson, 1991; Pearson, Barr, Kamil, & Mosenthal, 1984; Ruddell, Ruddell, & Singer, 1994). Yet because reading is an effortful activity ...

The number of the elderly across the globe will approximate 2.1 billion by 2050. Juxtaposed against this burgeoning segment of the population is evidence that nonpathological aging is associated with an increased risk for cognitive decline in a variety of domains, changes that can cause mild disability even before the onset of dementia. Given that pharmacological treatments that mitigate dement...

Our objective was to apply ideas from complexity theory to derive expanded neurodynamic models of Submarine Piloting and Navigation showing how teams cognitively organize around task changes. The cognitive metric highlighted was an electroencephalography-derived measure of engagement (termed neurophysiologic synchronies of engagement) that was modeled into collective team variables showing t...

OBJECTIVE Our aim was to examine whether engagement in productive activities, including volunteering, paid work, and childcare, protects older adults against the development of geriatric frailty. METHODS Data from the first (1988) and second (1991) waves of the MacArthur Study of Successful Aging, a prospective cohort study of high-functioning older adults aged 70-79 years (n = 1,072), was us...

PURPOSE Correlational and limited experimental evidence suggests that an engaged lifestyle is associated with the maintenance of cognitive vitality in old age. However, the mechanisms underlying these engagement effects are poorly understood. We hypothesized that mental effort underlies engagement effects and used fMRI to examine the impact of high-challenge activities (digital photography and ...

Recognition of intentions is a subconscious cognitive process vital to human communication. This skill enables anticipation and increases the quality of interactions between humans. Within the context of engagement, non-verbal signals are used to communicate the intention of starting the interaction with a partner. In this paper, we investigated methods to detect these signals in order to allow...