Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3UD, UK.
Proc Biol Sci. 2013 Jun 26;280(1765):20131151. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2013.1151. Print 2013 Aug 22.
Sociality is primarily a coordination problem. However, the social (or communication) complexity hypothesis suggests that the kinds of information that can be acquired and processed may limit the size and/or complexity of social groups that a species can maintain. We use an agent-based model to test the hypothesis that the complexity of information processed influences the computational demands involved. We show that successive increases in the kinds of information processed allow organisms to break through the glass ceilings that otherwise limit the size of social groups: larger groups can only be achieved at the cost of more sophisticated kinds of information processing that are disadvantageous when optimal group size is small. These results simultaneously support both the social brain and the social complexity hypotheses.
社会性主要是一个协调问题。然而,社会(或交流)复杂性假说表明,可获取和处理的信息种类可能会限制一个物种能够维持的社会群体的规模和/或复杂性。我们使用基于代理的模型来检验这样一个假说,即所处理信息的复杂性会影响所涉及的计算需求。我们表明,所处理信息种类的连续增加使生物能够突破否则会限制社会群体规模的玻璃天花板:只有以牺牲在最佳群体规模较小时不利的更复杂的信息处理为代价,才能实现更大的群体。这些结果同时支持了社会大脑假说和社会复杂性假说。