C-CS

Verstehen and Configuring as Experience Transfers

ABSTRACT

Configuring (Verstehen preconceived) is a cognitive process whereby remembered past experiences are recombined to fit present experiences. As a cognitive process, configuring is in the conceptual domain of learning.

Several educational experiments conducted in the Electronic Visualization Lab at UIC support the claim that virtual experiences can "bridge" null experience gaps in our understanding.

The Round Earth experiment was based on a theory of learning through virtual experiences developed by Stellan Ohlsson termed "deep learning." Ohlsson's research question is: "When experience or discourse attempts to communicate a deep idea that is both different from and more fundamental than the learner’s existing ideas, a paradox occurs. Although the intent is to replace the learner’s existing ideas, those existing ideas are the learner’s only tools by which to acquire the new idea. If this learning paradox is real then how does anyone ever learn anything new?" His model of learning is basically a "knowledge transfer."

The Virtual Harlem experiments, on the other hand, were based on a alternate model of learning through VR experiences. Whereas the Ohlsson model concerns "knowledge transfers," the alternative model concerns "experience transfers." The research question in the later is: can a simulation of a null experience provide a mental model of a situation through which persons can understand others with whom they do not share an experience of that situation? The hypothetical answer to this question is: by "configuring" null experiences, that is, by "experience transfers."

The key to filling an experience gap is an experience transfer where past experiences stored in our memory systems become aspects of a virtual or imagined experience. Virtual experiences require an expression that articulates (provides a mental model that approximates) the null experience.The mental model in an experience transfer is not a "model of" an actual experience, but a "model for" a novel virtual experience.

Verstehen as a cognitive process

The key to filling an experience gap is an experience transfer, a cognitive process. Dilthey's account of interpersonal communication contains that element not only in his conception of Sichhineinversetzen but also in the inclusion of feeling, re-experiencing, and re-structuring world views (Dilthey's terms). An experience transfer requires, in Schank&Abelson's terms, a "trans-script" of a pattern of experience as a structure within a larger structure of meaning and value, a world view.

I term the process of transferring experiences "configuring" and the resulting discursive articulation of the experience, a "configuration." Configuring is a cognitive process and a configuration is its expression. When we encounter persons unlike us and discover that we do not yet or can never experience what they have experienced, our only recourse is to substitute virtual experiences to fill the gap in our understanding. To accomplish this, the virtual experiences we undergo require an expression that articulates (provides a mental model that approximates) the null experience. The mental model in an experience transfer is not a "model of" an actual experience, but a "model for" a novel virtual experience.

If the virtual experience we create engenders a positive feeling that allows us to identify with the person unlike us, then we have successfully transferred emended our past experiences to bridge an experience gap. This requires us to recognize not only the details that make up the virtual experience but also to undergo it or relive it in our imaginations since we cannot live it in our lives. From a cognitive perspective, this is possible because we are able to transpose some of our past experiences into the shape of the null experience and to project that onto the other person. But, this cannot be done in a vacuum. The experience in question has to have purpose, value, and meaning in our belief system before we can say that we understand—albeit in a limited way—the other person.

In the following sections, I will take up various aspects of an experience transfer and relate it to current research in Learning Theory and Cognitive Psychology.

[Verstehen as an cog process] [Configuring & Learning] [Two Concept Transfer Experiments] [Ohlsson & Moher's VR Learning Theory] [The Virtual Harlem Experiments] [Concept & Exp. Transfers] [An Alternative Model of Learning through Virtual Experiences] [Research Problem] [Configuring as Exp. Transfer]

Configuring and Learning.

VR scenarios are often employed in preparing persons to bridge null experiences by simulating them. This type of learning is at the very origin of VR technology which emerged from flight simulations used to train pilots during WWII when planes were not available. The virtual experiences of flight simulation transferred over to the actual experience of flying because the learners were able to map the structure of the simulated experiences onto a real situation and perform accordingly. VR has been very effective as an instructional technology in instances where persons have not yet had experiences that they can have as in the case of flight simulations.

It needs to be noted that, although persons who enter VR scenarios actually see the simulations, they have to configure them to enjoy virtual experiences. Many VR scenarios, e.g. in Second Life, are not realistic. As in the arts, participants have to "suspend belief." In effect, they do not believe that what they see is real but they accept it "as if it were real" on the basis of recognizing what they see from past experiences. Virtual experiences, however unrealistic, nonetheless have real effects on participants. One of the well-know VR immersion experiences in the Chicago Disney World (which no longer exists) was a ride on a virtual roller coaster. Participants felt as if they were riding on a roller coaster.

It remains to be seen to what extent virtual experiences can teach persons about null experiences that they cannot have or never will have. For example, it is difficult to envision a VR scenario through which men can effectively learn to give birth. At the same time, being immersed in a simulation of giving birth would probably help men to understand what women undergo while giving birth.

Researchers at the Electronic Visualization Lab (EVL) at the University of Illinois—Chicago (UIC) have conducted several VR educational experiments in which users of the technology learn though simulations of null experiences.

Two concept transfer experiments

The NICE garden experiment (Narrative-based Immersive Constructionists/Collaborative Environments) is

. . . designed as an environment for young children to learn about the effects of sunlight and rainfall on plants, the "spontaneous" growth of weeds, the ability to recycle dead vegetation, and similar simple biological concepts that are a part of the life cycle of a garden. Since most children in a real garden can experience these concepts, the NICE garden provides its users with tools that allow its exploration from multiple different perspectives. In addition to planting, growing, and picking vegetables and flowers, the children have the ability to shrink down and walk beneath the surface of the soil to observe the roots of their plants or to meet other underground dwellers. They can also leap high up in the air, climb over objects, factor time, and experience firsthand the effects of sunlight and rainfall by controlling the environmental variables that cause them. (_http://www.evl.uic.edu/core.php?mod=4&type=1&indi=23, italics mine.)

By providing virtual experiences of the environmental variables that cause growth, children who participated in NICE learned biological concepts. They learned through radical null experiences in the VR garden such as shrinking down and walking beneath the surface of the soil or leaping high in the air over objects to experience firsthand the effects of sunlight and rainfall.

Another important educational VR project at EVL is “The Round Earth Project.”

The Round Earth Project is investigating how virtual reality technology can be used to help teach concepts that are counter-intuitive to a learner's currently held mental model. Virtual reality can be used to provide an alternative cognitive starting point that does not carry the baggage of past experiences. In particular, we are comparing two strategies for using virtual reality to teach children that the Earth is round when their everyday experience tells them that it is flat.

One strategy starts the children off by launching a spacecraft from the Earth’s surface and attempts to transform their current mental model of the Earth into the spherical model. The second strategy starts the children off on a small asteroid where they can learn about the sphericality of the asteroid independent of their Earth-bound experiences. Bridging activities then relate their asteroid experiences back to the Earth.

In each of the strategies, two children participate at the same time. One child participates from a CAVE while the other participates from an Immersadesk. The child in the CAVE travels around the Earth or the asteroid to retrieve items to complete a task, but can not find these items without assistance. The child at the Immersadesk with a view of the world as a sphere provides this assistance. The children must reconcile their different views to accomplish their task. (http://www.evl.uic.edu/roundearth )

By providing a virtual experience of a perspective from which the earth can be seen as a sphere in space, the children learned the concept of a round earth. The radical null experiences in the Round Earth project are traveling in a spacecraft and being on an asteroid. Thus virtual experiences that they cannot actually have enable them to obtain a new perspective on the world in which they live.

ohlsson & Moher's VR learning Theory

Stellan Ohlsson and Thomas Moher are the lead theorists in developing the learning theory underlying the NICE and Round Earth projects. The concept of “deep learning” was developed by Ohlsson. In “The Round Earth Project - Collaborative VR for Conceptual Learning,” deep learning is described in the following way: [I have italicized the emphasis on learning as the acquisition of concepts in bold red. I note the role in the learning process given to experience in bold blue.]

Underneath the extensive systems of domain-specific knowledge that a person brings to bear on problems and situations, there are organizing concepts - fundamental ideas - that influence how a person conceptualizes both direct experience and discourse within that domain. Such deep ideas form the axiomatic core of entire systems of knowledge (9, 10). When experience or discourse attempts to communicate a deep idea that is both different from and more fundamental than the learner’s existing ideas, a paradox occurs. Although the intent is to replace the learner’s existing ideas, those existing ideas are the learner’s only tools by which to acquire the new idea.

If this learning paradox is real then how does anyone ever learn anything new? Our approach to this question distinguishes between ‘transformationalist’ and ‘selectionist’ explanations of cognitive change. The transformationalist account assumes that new knowledge is created via operations on prior knowledge. Prior knowledge serves as raw material and the new knowledge is the result of generalization, specialization, or some other cognitive operator, applied to the raw material.

The selectionist account of cognitive change assumes that a new understanding of a domain or phenomenon begins by establishing an alternative cognitive starting point - an idea or concept is established outside the learner’s existing system of domain knowledge. Initially such an alternative representation might be rudimentary and hence dominated by the prior well-established representation. However, over time, all available representations compete and a representation that is useful in dealing with certain types of situations or problems gradually gains strength and may even displace the previous representation.

The selectionist framework suggests a particular instructional strategy for supporting deep conceptual learning - fundamental ideas which contrast with the learner’s current ideas need to be established on their own terms before they are brought into contact with the learner’s prior ideas. VR, we believe, provides a powerful tool in helping to create such alternative cognitive starting points. We can also use VR to juxtapose and switch between multiple interlinked representations of the same experience. Our natural tendency in assimilating new information is that each facet of reality tends to be conceptualized in only one way, within a single perspective. Impasses on simple problems occur because the thinker assimilates or subsumes the problem under a prior conceptualization that does not support the solution. Switching representations is difficult, but deep learning may require precisely such shifts between alternative representations.

While we believe it is crucial to construct these alternative mental representations, our overall strategy requires a second step. The alternative representations must be brought into contact with the learner’s prior knowledge of the domain and absorb or subsume it. Unless the learner brings his or her new experience on the asteroid into contact with the everyday experience of walking on a seemingly flat Earth, they don’t reach the learning objective. The point is not just to know what it would be like to walk on a spherical planetary body, but to understand that the Earth is such a body. We call this second step ‘bridging activities.’ (http://www.evl.uic.edu/aej/papers/cga99/cga99rev.html )

The authors describe the VR scenario in which children are on an asteroid as a “new experience.” At the same time it is identified as “an alternative cognitive starting point” where “an idea or concept is established outside the learner’s existing system of domain knowledge.” While I have no quarrel with this account, it seems to treat the new experience on the asteroid only as the starting point for an idea. The experiential dimensions of the VR scenario are bracketed out of the equation. Yet, as an experience, they give the children in the experiment an alternative PERSPECTIVE which contrasts to their habitual perspective. Flat and round are ideas but they are deeply bound to perception. I argue that the prior condition of the knowledge transfer they describe is an experience transfer.

Ohlsson’s theory of “deep learning” accounts for the knowledge transfer in the project but not for the experience transfer upon which it is based. As in the Round Earth project, so too in the NICE project, the experience of an alternative perspective would seem to be the condition upon which a knowledge transfer can take place. The constructionist model employed in the NICE experiment emphasizes doing without accounting for the experience transfer. Doing things in a virtual world requires past experiences to be transferred to the new situation. In addition, other factors such as motivation, imagination, the episodic aspects of the prior knowledge base, and the story-worlds involved are bracketed out of the Round Earth experiment. This is understandable but notable because these factors play more significant roles when the subjects of the experiments are adults.

The virtual Harlem experiments

Directed at adults, “the Virtual Harlem project” followed the previously mentioned educational VR projects. It was initially created by Bryan Carter at the Advanced Technology Center at the University of Missouri. Bryan obtained a grant to build a VR scenario of Harlem NY in the 30s at the height of the Harlem Renaissance period of African American culture to complement his course on the literature of the period. Ten blocks of Harlem were built featuring some of its most famous sites: the Cotton Club, the Savoy, the Lafayette and Apollo Theatres, and others. In addition famous figures such as Langston Hughes and Marcus Garvey were placed in the VR scenario. When you approach them, they speak in character. When the Virtual Harlem project was moved to UIC and I became its coordinator, we began to work on designs that could alter the views of visitors who were not familiar with the range and richness of African American culture. We aligned ourselves with the aim of the New Negro movement of the 20s and 30s whose leaders developed a “counter-stereotyping” strategy to work against the prevailing stereotypes of African Americans featured in films and elsewhere, notably the stereotypes promulgated by D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation.

Virtual Harlem provides virtual experiences of the Harlem Renaissance, an important period in the history of African American culture. When displayed in a CAVE (a four walled VR setup), visitors are immersed in the setting which surrounds them. They feel as if they are walking down the streets of Harlem although they are actually standing still. The Virtual Harlem project was one of the earliest efforts to recreate an historical past that most persons cannot have experienced during their lifetimes (except those who lived in Harlem, New York in the late 20s and early 30s). Yet, because of the “immersive” quality of EVL’s CAVE visitors to Virtual Harlem feel that they have experienced history even though it is not possible to do so. In effect they learn about experiences that they cannot have.

The Virtual Harlem Experiments explored inter-cultural communication; specifically ways in which persons who are not African Americans can understand persons who are. In addition, they explored ways in which persons can understand past cultures, especially if they did not grow up in them. Both aspects of these inter-cultural communications involve radical null experiences since persons cannot have many of the experiences persons from a different culture have and since persons cannot directly experience the past, even their own history which can only be remembered. My contention is that virtual experiences of cultural configurations can provide learning environments which are capable of bridging radical null experience gaps. (For a detailed account of the Virtual Harlem Experiments, see Configuring History: Teaching the Harlem Renaissance through VR Cityscapes.)

Concept transfers and Experience Transfers

Learning is often treated by cognitive psychologists as a concept transfer. In his "Learning to Do and Learning to Understand: A Lesson and a Challenge for Cognitive Modeling, Stellan Ohlsson offers an instance of conceptual transfers:

Consider the Darwinian schema for explaining biological adaptation. … To explain why species G has trait P, identify some relevant dimension of the phenotype of the ancestor species, postulate inheritable variation in that dimension, identify factors in the ancestor's ecological niche that made some variants more fit than others, infer that those variants reproduced more frequently, and, finally, claim that gradual changes in the relevant trait accumulated over the course of many generations. Particular Darwinian explanations are constructed by articulating this pattern (Ohlsson, 1992a). (53)

… learning the Darwinian schema is a process of assembling or--to use a Piagetian term--coordinating a select subset of prior schemas into a more complex schema. For example, the novice needs to hook his or her selection schema into his or her schema for fitness to get the idea of natural selection; then he or she must hook that conception into his or her schema for the accumulation of many small changes over time; and so on. In this view, learning moves from simpler knowledge structures toward more complex ones, a process that has no obvious counterpart within the deductive model. Although such combination processes have occasionally been proposed, they have received remarkable little attention in recent work on learning. (54-55)

Ohlsson's work focuses on concepts. He does acknowledge ambiguities in conceptions of schema and mental models, but does not pursue the issue. However, given the ambiguities, particularly concerning whether the schema is drawn from imagistic or semantic memory systems, it seems appropriate to suggest that there are experience transfers (from the autobiographical memory system) as well as concept transfers. However, traditional school curricula are predominantly based on knowledge transfer models of learning.

There are different types of concept transfers. Ohlsson, for example, distinguishes between skill acquisition and knowledge acquisition. This contrast appears in the learning theories underlying the NICE project and the Round Earth project. The former is based on a “constructivist” model of learning by doing, and the latter is based on a “knowledge transfer” model of learning through an alternative cognitive starting point.

Based on work done on the Virtual Harlem project, this study focuses on “experience transfers,” that is, learning about experiences that persons have not yet had or cannot have. Experiences that persons have not yet had but can have are typical obstacles to communication. On the other hand, experiences that persons cannot have under any circumstances are radical obstacles to racial, gendered, and professional communication. Nonetheless, VR experiments have successfully provided “experience transfers” by simulating radical null experiences.

Although the researchers who designed the experiments consider them to be about learning concepts, it is rather obvious from their design as virtual experiences (growth of weeds, for instance) that the children transferred their virtual experiences (looking at roots from underneath the soil) to understand actual experiences.

An Alternative Model of Learning through Virtual Experiences

In the VR experiments described above, each attempts to “bridge” a null experience gap. The NICE project is designed to teach children about plant biology through experiences which they cannot have. The Round Earth project is designed to teach children that the earth is round, an experience they cannot have and one that is counter-intuitive to their experience of the earth as flat. The Virtual Harlem project is designed to teach visitors about a past period of African American culture, an experience which they cannot have. As a starting point for my research I chose the paradox posed in the Round Earth project: if “the learner’s existing ideas” are “the learner’s only tools by which to acquire the new idea,” “how does anyone ever learn anything new?”

The question posed in the paradox has been answered by Piaget among others--if a new experience cannot be easily assimilated to existing frameworks, it has to be accommodated by constructing alternative mental representations. Ohlsson & Moher offer the following assessment of this answer: “Researchers from Piaget to Karmiloff-Smith [19] have tried to explain cognitive development in terms of so-called transition mechanisms. However, there is as yet no widely accepted description of a developmental transition mechanism. In general, any transformational account of cognitive change assumes the existence of powerful transformations that can traverse the space of possible conceptualizations without search.” They argue that “In contrast, a displacement account of cognitive change assumes that a new understanding of a domain or phenomenon begins by establishing an alternative cognitive starting point, an idea or concept that is established outside the learner’s existing system of domain knowledge” (http://www.evl.uic.edu/aej/papers/chihtml/chi99paper.htm ).

Using for the moment Piaget’s delineation of the process of accommodation, his account of learning the absence in one’s cognitive framework of schemata capable of assimilating a “new experience” requires re-arranging the existing schemata to adapt to it. Philip Johnson-Laird points to "perception as a source of mental models," and describes his theory of them as "a simple three-part inventory: linguistic representations, models, and procedures for manipulating them ("Mental Models," 470, 491, italics mine.) Mental models of situations can be as numerous as the perspectives on that situation and, when warranted, these models can be adapted and revised ("Mental Models," Ruth M. J. Byrne, 224ff.). In Giles Fauconnier's work, separate mental models are blended to create others (Mental Spaces, The Way We Think.). These accounts suggest that an “experience gap,” a missing experiential schema, can be reassembling remembered experiences to match its apparent structure.

As I have noted, virtual null experiences are used in the EVL experiments to bridge gaps in understanding and thereby resolve "the learning paradox." The role they play in learning is not accounted for in the Ohlsson/Moher model. Children cannot walk beneath the ground as they do in the NICE project and children cannot inhabit asteroids as they do in the Round Earth project. Yet in both experiments, their views of the actual world and their beliefs about it are altered by means of these virtual experiences. The Ohlsson/Moher "selectionist" model brackets out experience transfers. As a result, it is a partial account for the learning experience in Virtual Harlem, which depends upon dramatization, changes in perspective, and empathetic effects that alter the motivation to learn. Experiences of the possible worlds in the NICE and Round Earth experiments are virtual experiences that contrast with actual experiences. They involve perceptions, sensations, and emotions. These experiences are not reducible to the concepts we might use to refer to them.

At present we have yet to develop experiments to study whether VR scenarios such as Virtual Harlem can be sites for learning how to understand persons who are unlike us because they have experiences we cannot have. In rethinking the Virtual Harlem project, the concept of “null experiences” as gaps in cognitive frameworks that are obstacles to communication is now a focal point. Reframing the problematic of Virtual Harlem broadens its scope. Generally, the problem of null experiences pertains to many other areas of interpersonal communication beyond communication between different races.

research problem

In the light of experience transfers, the Ohlsson/Moher paradox—if “the learner’s existing ideas” are “the learner’s only tools by which to acquire the new idea,” “how does anyone ever learn anything new?”—needs to be reframed. In my view, the paradox is only a paradox if one takes a "selectionist" position that assumes new mental models (for them concepts) are acquired "by establishing an alternative cognitive starting point, an idea or concept that is established outside the learner’s existing system of domain knowledge." They reject the transformationalist view that "that new knowledge is created via operations on prior knowledge. Prior knowledge serves as raw material and the new knowledge is the result of generalization, specialization, or some other cognitive operator, applied to the raw material." For them, the cognitive operations required in this account, assume "the existence of powerful transformations that can traverse the space of possible conceptualizations without search." The difficulty they pose, does not apply to our cognitive ability to re-arrange experiences imaginatively. I will take up this issue in the next essay on Configuring and Cognitive Blending.'

Their paradox can be reframed as a research problem concerning how we store past experiences in our memory systems: How can persons understand experiences they cannot possibly have had? Why is this problem? Normally, persons communicate with one another in the context of shared codes and experiences. When people differ from each other because they CANNOT share experiences, this "gap" in their relationship often occasions serious misunderstandings. As I note in "Null Experiences,"

In instances where persons cannot share experiences, either of two conditions usually pertains: (1) a typical null experience wherein one of the persons has not yet had experiences that would enable communication, or (2) a radical null experience wherein one of the persons CANNOT actually have the experiences that would enable communication. This study focuses upon experiences that persons cannot actually have which are termed "radical null experiences." As I noted in an previous essay, many relationships involve radical null experiences.

In instances of radical null experiences, persons have nothing (hence "null) in their memories to guide their understanding when they encounter persons who have had the experiences they lack. An important dimension of understanding others unlike us is learning about the experiences they normally have which we do not have. This type of learning requires a complex cognitive process—configuring, which requires a constellation of cognitive operations chief of which are analogizing, transposing perspectives, and imagining a possible world.

It should be noted that the VR experiments mentioned above are representations of environments that can only be inhabited by some form of transportation. As such, they are models of possible worlds which are model for or dispositions to behave accordingly. As models for, as configurations, they bridge null experience gaps.

Configuring as an Experience Transfer

Using Clifford Geertz's distinction, knowledge transfers communicate conceptual "models of" the actual world, whereas experience transfers communicate "models for" a possible world. Geertz writes:

The term "model" has, however, two senses—an "of" sense and a "for" sense—and though these are but aspects of the same basic concept they are very much worth distinguishing for analytic purposes. In the first, what is stressed is the manipulation of symbol structures so as to bring them, more or less closely, into parallel with the pre-established nonsymbolic system, as when we grasp how dams work by developing a theory of hydraulics or constructing a flow chart. The theory or chart models physical relationships in such a way—that is, by expressing their structure in synoptic form—as to render them apprehensible; it is a model of "reality." In the second, what is stressed is the manipulation of the nonsymbolic systems in terms of the relationships expressed in the symbolic, as when we construct a dam according to the specifications implied in an hydraulic theory or the conclusions drawn from a flow chart. Here, the theory is a model under whose guidance physical relationships are organized: it is a model for "reality." (93)

Remembered past experiences are "models of" reality. However, they are materials from which "models for" possibilities are constructed. As Geertz points out:

The intertransposability of models for and models of which symbolic formulation makes possible is the distinctive characteristic of our mentality. (94)

Geertz goes on to link the intertransposability of these models to the formation of dispositions and motives to behave in a particular manner. Just as religious rituals prepare the participants to behave according to a specific belief structure (world view), so virtual experiences prepare participants to behave according to a specific belief structure. The virtual experience which is shaped by (transferred from) our memories of past experiences engenders a disposition to act in accordance with the model for that action.

I term this process of experience transfers ”configuring.” Like Dilthey, I believe configuring is a common everyday cognitive practice."To convey the nature of understanding, Dilthey employed terms such as "transposition," "projection," and "resubjectification," which connote a process of empathic identification. The German terms (Gleichsetzen, Sichhineinversetzen, Sichubertragen) suggest the adoption of the life-position or world-view of another . . .“ (Ermarth, 1981, 250)

Another delineation of a cognitive process bears upon this delineation of configuring as an experience transfer—conceptual blending. In this essay, the process was considered from the point of view of cognition; in the next, it is considered from the point of view of expression.

jjs

Notes:

. [(Because it is marked linguistically, it can be traced in discourses making possible configural discourse analysis.)] ...

. [(See Clifford Geertz' "Religion as a Cultural System" in his Interpretation of Culture for examples of the distinction between a "model of" and a "model for.")] ...

. [The phrase "without the baggage of past experience" is somewhat misleading. It is a reference to their day to day experience of the earth as flat which needs to be replaced by an alternative representation of the earth. In the Ohlsson/Moher account, a selectionist approach is is one that is taken in the experiment. In the selectionist approach, "shifting representations" promote the conceptual change by the displacement of one representation for another. While the representation of the earth as flat is changed into one in which the earth is round, past experiences are reassembled into a model for, that is, an alternative representation. For children, the round earth contains trees, homes, schools, and friends. Only a fragment of their model of the world is altered. Their suspension of belief that allows them to pretend they are riding in a spacecraft depends upon their visual experience of spacecrafts. As Ohlsson and Moher note: "The second strategy starts the children off on a small asteroid where they can learn about the sphericality of the asteroid independent of their Earth-bound experiences. Bridging activities then relate their asteroid experiences back to the Earth" (italics mine).

In the experiment is key lies in a change in the children's perspectives. In the work of Ronald Langacker (Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, 116ff.) and his student Giles Fauconnier (Mental Spaces xxxviii-xlv, The Way We Think 40ff), the variety of perspectives available to perception in the experience of the phenomenon make possible alternative construals. Fauconnier's model of cognitive "blending" may very well provide the widely accepted "account of cognitive change [which] assumes the existence of powerful transformations" to which Ohlsson alludes. In addition, Eleanor Rosch's work on categorization links conceptual domains directly to experience ( Cf.: Cognition and Categorization). Generally, Lakoff, Langacker, Fauconnier, and Rosch (to mention only a few of the leading thinkers in cognitive linguistics) ground their work on linguistic representation in experience, particularly in perception. As Langacker points out in his "Introduction and Overview" of Foundations, his view of language (& that of his associates) is at odds with the view of language as a rule-governed logical system exemplified by Chomsky's generative grammar. For Lakoff, in particular, language is far more analogical than logical. Abstract concepts are at root metaphors derived from experiences (Cf.: Metaphors We Live By, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things).] ...

. [In Ohlsson and Moher's model of learning, perception has no role to play. From a cognitive linguist point of view, the representation of the concepts "flat" and "round" are deeply indebted to perception and hence to perspective. For a summary of Langacker's account, see David Lee's Cognitive Linguistics, 2ff.] ...

. [In his "Learning to Do and Learning to Understand: A Lesson and a Challenge for Cognitive Modeling," Ohlsson contrasts practical knowledge (competence, expertise, skill) to understanding (the generation of symbols). For Ohlsson practical knowledge is governed by goal oriented performances. Declarative Knowledge (understanding) is an epistemic activity (arguing, describing, explaining, predicting, pertaining to "higher order" learning. This contrast appears in the learning theories underlying the NICE project and the Round Earth project. The former is based on a “constructivist” model of learning by doing, and the latter is based on a “knowledge transfer” model of learning through an alternative cognitive starting point. The following chart identifies some Contrasts in the Learning models:

The NICE project	The Round Earth project	Comment from perspective of a contrasting model of learning
concepts acquired by performing a task.	concept transfer by alternative cognitive starting point	A prior experience transfer resulting in a novel mental model is named in accordance with a conventional semantic framework & that reference is established.
motivation: intrinsic to the task--desire for plants to grow.	[motivation]*	The desire to grow plants and to look at the earth from the perspective of a spacecraft or asteroid are conditions of configuring & depend upon experiential perspectives and motivation.
storyboard as a record of events	[narrative / world view]*	A world view as an historicized cognitive framework is a condition of narrative persuasion*
prior experience of the situation = a mystery (null)	prior experience = flat world	The experience of biological growth is a radical null experience as is a round world.

*bracketed out of the experiments. **modification of Cobern’s Everyday Thoughts about Nature: Worldview Investigation of Important Concepts Students Use to Make Sense of Nature with Specific Attention of Science. (Cobern 2000). ***modification of Green and Brock’s “Transportation-Imagery model of Narrative Persuasion” (Green, Strange, & Brock, Narrative Impact: Social and cognitive Foundations, 2002)

In contrast, configuring is a narrative mode of thought not a declarative one. It is practical (an experiential guide) but is not necessarily goal-oriented. Ohlsson contrasts practical and declarative knowledge by suggesting that "the medium for skill practice is action while the medium for reflection is discourse." Configurations are expressed as discourse structures.] ...

. [If we replace Piaget's "schemata" with Philip Johnson Laird's "mental model" or Giles Fauconnier's "mental spaces," this brings into consideration the role of the perspective taken on the experience in relation to the perceived situation. Transposing perspectives is an experiential component of the learning process. It has an analogical character rather than a logical character in the sense that the mental representation of the an experience necessarily includes the perspective from which the representation is drawn and which is then mapped onto new experiences by analogy..]...

. [Research on the phenomenon of "psychological transportation," which is defined "as a state in which a reader becomes absorbed in the narrative world, leaving the real world, at least momentarily, behind," indicates that readers' propensity to experience transportation is dependent upon mental imagery evoked by the narrative (Narrative Impact, Green/Brock 2002, 317). "A mental image is a representation of a particular stimulus that is formed by activation of a sensory system and, thus, is experienced by the organism as having similar qualities to the actual perception of the stimulus." (Dadds, Bovbjerg, Reed, & Cutmore, 1997, p. 90) Such sequences of mental images contextualized by a narrative provide the sensations that accompany actual experiences. "Instead of seeing activity in their physical surroundings, transported readers see the action of the story unfolding before them." (Green/Brock 2002, 317). Such virtual experiences, which are usually "seen" "in the mind's eye," can be remembered.] ... $$

. [( When the process of configuring is developed systematically in specific projects, it can be employed as a method of study.)] ...

.[(Research on the phenomenon of "psychological transportation," which is defined "as a state in which a reader becomes absorbed in the narrative world, leaving the real world, at least momentarily, behind" (Green/Brock 2002 317), indicates that readers' propensity to experience transportation is dependent upon mental imagery evoked by the narrative. "A mental image is a representation of a particular stimulus that is formed by activation of a sensory system and, thus, is experienced by the organism as having similar qualities to the actual perception of the stimulus." (Dadds, Bovbjerg, Reed, & Cutmore, 1997, p. 90) Such sequences of mental images contextualized by a narrative provide the sensations that accompany actual experiences. "Instead of seeing activity in their physical surroundings, transported readers see the action of the story unfolding before them." (Green/Brock 2002 317). Such virtual experiences, which are usually "seen" "in the mind's eye," can be remembered.)] ...