What Can Cognitive Science Offer Digital Humanities?
Cognitive science and its people, known as "konnarit" (cognitive science students), are moving to become part of the Faculty of Arts' "Linguistic Diversity in the Digital Age" degree program. This program belongs to the so-called digital humanities research tradition. This writing is aimed at both other cognitive scientists and our future digital humanities colleagues. Who are we, and what do we do?
The cognitive science unit is a small but productive and genuinely interdisciplinary research team. Over the past five years, cognitive science has studied, for example, human memory functions, sound processing, emotions and decision-making in poker, perception and expertise in driving, moral psychology of robotics, philosophy of computation, biolinguistics, language technology, and animal cognition in general. From all the above topics, several high-quality peer-reviewed articles have also been published.
Methods have utilized, for example, qualitative interview data, Internet-based but purely experimental questionnaire data, cars instrumented with eye-tracking cameras, and EEG and MEG measurements — or pure theory and philosophical analysis.
None of the above research is done in a vacuum. All researchers and research assistants talk to each other, exchange ideas daily, criticize each other's experimental setups, theories, and claims, draw (fun but really sensible) diagrams on the whiteboard, and drink a lot of espresso together — and sparkling wine whenever (at least) articles are accepted for publication. Everyone understands each other's research topics well enough to offer useful and necessary development suggestions. Cognitive science students are likewise interested in several, or just one, of the above topics. Despite this variation, they share a genuine interest in understanding and explaining phenomena, i.e., science. Cognitive science students are science-oriented and approach problems — whether neuroscientific or philosophical, or something in between — with sincere curiosity. It is also my pleasure and privilege to sometimes spend evenings with them over beer (or something else), where discussions often relate to science, or at least have a good-quality scientific critical approach. These people will become experts in their fields in the true sense of the word. Cognitive science, its staff, and students are easy to praise lavishly, wholeheartedly, and honestly. What can we offer digital humanities?
Digital humanities has at least two research spearheads: the first develops and utilizes computational methods in humanistic research, for example, in linguistic analysis. The second evaluates how people themselves relate to and experience the continuously digitizing world.
Cognitive scientists can sharpen both spearheads. Our programming skills have obvious benefits, for example, in developing linguistic text mining algorithms — especially since cognitive science programmers are typically well versed in linguistics and biolinguistics. If the programmer also has experience in qualitative research, as many cognitive scientists do, interdisciplinary collaboration with linguists and computer scientists is more seamless — a cognitive scientist speaks the same language with both. The question of what happens to humans or "humanity" in a continuously digitizing world is broad and requires both social and moral psychological as well as philosophical understanding of human behavior. Cognitive science already studies the moral psychology of robotics; that is, what kinds of moral decisions people would want artificial intelligences to make in various situations. This research question is at the heart of digital humanities, but so far cognitive scientists are the only ones in Finland who study it.
Cognitive science also trains experts in usability psychology. A usability researcher evaluates in what kind of digital environment our activities are seamless and enjoyable, and in what kind they are laborious and distressing. The usability expertise brought by cognitive science can open a research line on "AI ergonomics" for digital humanities.
So what can we offer digital humanities? A competent and genuinely interdisciplinary group of researchers who are well versed in the humanistic research tradition and can apply computational methods to it (and also develop these methods); new openings in digital humanities research; an extremely motivated and passionate group of students; and at least one espresso machine.
Cognitive science researchers and students form a well-oiled Small Wheel. Small wheels don't need as many structure-supporting spokes as Big Wheels to be just as sturdy. If the wheel has fewer spokes, it experiences less air resistance, and it spins faster.