Reconsidering group cognition: From conceptual confusion to a boundary area between cognitive and socio-cultural perspectives?

Various strands of research in educational, social and organizational psychology focus on structures of collectively created meaning that emerge in and coordinate activities of groups. Despite expanding, this field still lacks conceptual clarity, enhanced by the multitude of terms used, such as common ground, shared understanding, collective mind, team mental models, and distributed cognition.We conducted a review of the conceptual frameworks being used in empirical studies, focusing on the premises of the conceptualizations. Therefore, we connected these conceptualizations to either cognitive or socio-cultural perspectives on the social nature of cognition. Some studies are identified as representing initial ways of boundary crossing between these perspectives. To conclude, we explore ways for boundary crossing and cross-fertilization in future research.