Cognitive and Information Sciences, University of California, Merced, USA.
Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Merced, USA.
Sci Rep. 2021 Apr 19;11(1):8492. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-87717-7.
Humans and other complex organisms exhibit intelligent behaviors as individual agents and as groups of coordinated agents. They can switch between independent and collective modes of behavior, and flexible switching can be advantageous for adapting to ongoing changes in conditions. In the present study, we investigated the flexibility between independent and collective modes of behavior in a simulated social foraging task designed to benefit from both modes: distancing among ten foraging agents promoted faster detection of resources, whereas flocking promoted faster consumption. There was a tradeoff between faster detection versus faster consumption, but both factors contributed to foraging success. Results showed that group foraging performance among simulated agents was enhanced by loose coupling that balanced distancing and flocking among agents and enabled them to fluidly switch among a variety of groupings. We also examined the effects of more sophisticated cognitive capacities by studying how human players improve performance when they control one of the search agents. Results showed that human intervention further enhanced group performance with loosely coupled agents, and human foragers performed better when coordinating with loosely coupled agents. Humans players adapted their balance of independent versus collective search modes in response to the dynamics of simulated agents, thereby demonstrating the importance of adaptive flexibility in social foraging.
人类和其他复杂生物作为个体和协调的群体表现出智能行为。它们可以在独立和集体的行为模式之间切换，灵活的切换对于适应条件的持续变化是有利的。在本研究中，我们在一个模拟的社会觅食任务中研究了独立和集体行为模式之间的灵活性，这个任务旨在从两种模式中受益：十个觅食代理之间的距离可以促进更快地检测到资源，而群体聚集则可以促进更快地消耗资源。更快地检测和更快地消耗之间存在权衡，但这两个因素都有助于觅食成功。结果表明，通过松散耦合可以增强模拟代理之间的群体觅食表现，这种松散耦合可以平衡代理之间的距离和聚集，使它们能够在各种分组之间流畅地切换。我们还通过研究人类玩家在控制一个搜索代理时如何提高性能来检查更复杂认知能力的影响。结果表明，在松散耦合的代理中，人类干预进一步增强了群体表现，并且当人类觅食者与松散耦合的代理协调时，表现更好。人类玩家根据模拟代理的动态调整独立搜索模式和集体搜索模式的平衡，从而证明了在社会觅食中适应性灵活性的重要性。
