Cognitive intelligence is built with human behavior in everyday activities performed in different settings. This pattern of behavior that builds cognitive knowledge is applied to define rules for appropriate behavior in a setting. In a social context setting is a space such that behavior in that space has little in common with behavior in another space; there is a greater sharing of personnel, objects, activities, and behavior within the space. The activities within a setting are a passive response to the setting where the actions to perform the activity are influenced by the past experience in that setting. Barker’s view is that settings are phenomenological constructs of participants, the elements that construct settings change from setting to setting. Settings are not objective i.e. not independent of observer and participant. The behavior of a person changes in different social contexts because a person acts according to the behavioral rules constructed by the person for this context. These behavior rules are based on cognitive knowledge, individual intelligence, setting factors, and external influences such as time, money, and opinions. Dialectic analysis and arithmetic are applied to these factors to derive a solution shape for the activity in a setting. The activity involves complex decision making, processing of overwhelming amount of information, relationships between setting factors, and repetition of actions. When operations are carried out to meet the goals of an activity new information is collected, this cognitive knowledge is used to define new goals for an activity or new actions to meet previously defined goals.
In a supermarket, the grocery shopping activity of a shopper is influenced by the cognitive knowledge of the shopper gained in this supermarket.
- Shopper writes goals of shopping activity according to the physical layout of the supermarket as remembered from the past visit and groups items of one segment together. The orderly list of items enables a shopper to save time.
- Different segments in the supermarket considered as settings may have different shopping behaviors because of the items sold in that segment. E.g. shoppers may buy weekly stock for fresh vegetables and dairy products, an economy package for a year supply of toiletries.
- When there is more than one choice available for a product the shopper may apply dialectic analysis for rational decision making such as storage space at home for the economy package. Decision-making may be influenced by external factors such as a friend’s recommendation or a TV commercial.
- When a product is bought for the first time or a new choice is available the shopper may apply arithmetic to the cost-weight factor for the best solution.
- The cognitive knowledge that is built by the repetition of this shopping pattern is then applied to future shopping activities to save time and money.
The shopper picks items from the shelves on routine shopping with cognitive knowledge. The conclusion to the shopping activity problem is reached by overlooking new options unless the shopper is interrupted to consider new pieces of evidence for correction in the cognitive knowledge. The shopper who has physical access to old and new pieces of evidence within the arena applies dialectic analysis to close gaps between problem definition and solution; arithmetic problem solving is the last step applied to refine the activity solution. This solution is then applied to all similar activities in a context, i.e. where there is a similarity between setting, behaviors, or goals.