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Distributed Cognition at the Crime Scene

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Abstract

The examination of a scene of crime provides both an interesting case study and analogy for consideration of Distributed Cognition . In this paper, Distribution is defined by the number of agents involved in the criminal justice process, and in terms of the relationship between a Crime Scene Examiner and the environment being searched.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This example follows the legal system in England and Wales; while other countries will follow different processes, the point is that several people are involved in the interpretation of evidence.

  2. 2.

    In order to prevent one drawer obscuring the contents of the next, and in order to prevent the need to close drawers, the experienced criminal is likely to open drawers from the bottom up—but in this scene, we had obviously opened them top down.

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Acknowledgements

The work reported in this paper was supported by a grant from EPSRC [GR/S85115 MsSAM (Methods to Support Shared Analysis for Mobile Investigators). I am grateful to all of the people who worked with me on this project, and to the Crime Scene Examiners who gave an insight into their work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electronic, Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, England

    Chris Baber

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  1. Chris Baber
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Correspondence to Chris Baber .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Slagelse, Denmark

    Stephen J. Cowley

  2. Department of Psychology, Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames, United Kingdom

    Frédéric Vallée-Tourangeau

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Baber, C. (2017). Distributed Cognition at the Crime Scene. In: Cowley, S., Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (eds) Cognition Beyond the Brain. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49115-8_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49115-8_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-49115-8

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