Abstract: Distributed Cognition is distributed in the person, across the persons, in the mediators, in the environments, in the culture, in the social world, and in time. Distributed Cognition is a new unit of analysis involving all things that participated in cognition. In this paper, first, there was a brief introduction of the concept and the history of Distributed Cognition. Then, the relationship between Distributed Cognition and Individual Cognition is expatiated, by describing two related models: the Reciprocal Interaction Model, and the Concentric Model. Finally, the theory value and applications of Distributed Cognition were illuminated by some examples.

Key words: distributed cognition, individual cognition, external representation.