Collective Cognition Flashcards

1
Q

What two animals display collective cognition

A

Starling ‘murmurations’
Sardine Shoals

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2
Q

Describe Edmund Selous’ view on Starling Flocks and Collective Cognition

A

they circle; now dense like a polished roof, now disseminated like the meshes of some vast all-heaven-sweeping net…wheeling, rending, darting…a madness in the sky

They must think collectively, all at the same time, or at least in streaks or patches —a square yard or so of an idea, a flash out of so many brains

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3
Q

Do starlings have a collective mind

A

No (but also yes…)

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4
Q

What are the three simple rules of Starlings’ Collective Mind?

A
  • Attraction (when a neighbor is inside “zone of attraction”)
  • Alignment (when a neighbor is inside “zone of orientation”)
  • Avoidance (when a neighbor is inside ”zone of repulsion”)
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5
Q

What do individual starlings only respond to

A

Neighbors

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6
Q

What do starlings lock

A

Central control (the system is self organized)

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7
Q

What are the three rules about starlings sufficient for

A

Generation of very realistic flock behavior in simulations

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8
Q

What is the argument for starlings having a collective mind

A

Interactions between individuals allow a group to function as an integrated sensory, information-processing and decision-making unit

Hence, individuals in groups have access to higher-order computational capabilities

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9
Q

What are the 7 reasons for why animals live in groups

A
  • Dilute risk
  • Build bigger things
  • Raise young together
  • Follow those in the know
  • Spot danger quicker
  • Hunt larger prey
  • Save energy
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10
Q

Describe collective sensing

A

Individuals have access to their own information as well as others’
Increases effective perceptual range
Increases effective perceptual range

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11
Q

Give an example of an animal that does collective sensing

A

Visual field reconstruction for individual fish within a shoal is limited but when summed for all fish theres a visual sensory network

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12
Q

What can groups function like in collective sensing?

A

Sensor arrays

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13
Q

Describe an example of an animal that uses collective sensing to form sensor arrays

A

Soaring birds use thermals (rising columns of warm air) to gain height

Detecting where thermals are is not a trivial task, and locating the next one is essential for continuing travel (as in paragliding)

In flocks of white storks, individuals monitor where others circle -> this gives them information beyond their own sensory range
-> the flock functions as a distributed sensor network for detecting thermals

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14
Q

What two human oriented fields does collective sensing have applications in

A

Robotics and sports

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15
Q

What is collective memory

A

The many brains of a collective can also function to hold more (or more diverse) memory than individuals

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16
Q

What is the benefit of collective memory

A

Full information does not have to be stored in a single brain

17
Q

What is experience-pooling in collective memory?

A

Collective problem-solving through combining different individuals’ knowledge

18
Q

Give an example of experience pooling

A
  • Three-spined sticklebacks were trained on a two-stage foraging task
  • Each fish was only trained on one stage (either A. how to navigate to a feeder box, or B. how to open the feeder box)
  • Shoals consisting of A and B fish solved the full task faster than shoals of all-A or shoals of all-B fish
  • Memory for complete solution can be stored in separate brains
19
Q

Give an example of collective memory in migration

A
  • Normally, bighorn sheep and moose are migratory: they track the seasonal emergence of vegetation across north-western US
  • But: translocated populations (those moved by humans outside of their normal range) initially do not migrate, but then gradually begin to do so, and increasingly better track the seasonal emergence of food
  • They collectively build up knowledge about environment (over decades)
20
Q

Describe the basis of collective decision making

A

Not everyone in a group will necessarily agree on what they want to do next, where they want to go, etc.

Who makes the decision?

21
Q

What are two human oriented examples of collective decision making

A

Democracy (average preferences, take majority opinion)

Despotism (one or a few individuals lead)

22
Q

Describe collective decisions in killer whales

A
  • Killer whale pods tend to be led by females
  • Among females, post-reproductive (old) females do most of the leading
  • In times when salmon (critical food source) abundance is low, leadership by postreproductive females is especially prominent.
  • Old females act as repositories of ecological knowledge, and are called on when times are hard
23
Q

Describe collective decisions in Elephants

A
  • African elephant family groups: matriarchs (old females) also act as “repositories of knowledge”
  • Playback experiments show that matriarchs can discriminate calls of a large number of extra-family individuals and initiate defensive behavior if they identify a potentially dangerous intruder
24
Q

Describe the basis a study of collective intelligence

A
  • Visitors at a livestock fair could enter a competition to guess the weight of an ox
  • Galton (1907) analyzed the visitors’ guesses statistically
25
Q
A
26
Q

What is the many wrongs principle of collective intelligence

A

Accuracy of a democratic collective decision is a function of group size.

if more individuals contribute to the decision (with similar or equal weight) the accuracy of decision increases

27
Q

Describe collective intelligence

A

Groups can arrive at decisions more accurate than any given individual “expert” or best guesser

28
Q

What is a pop culture example of collective intelligence

A

Who wants to be a millionaire:
- “Phone a friend” correct in 65% of cases
- “Ask the audience” in 91%!

29
Q

Describe Collective Intelligence in birds

A
  • Homing pigeons were released from a distant site either alone (solo) or in flocks (groups of 6 birds)
  • Solos had to solve the task alone; flocks could solve it together
  • Solution accuracy was measured as a “Straightness index” – how close to the shortest possible path (beeline) the birds flew
  • Result: Flocks flew more efficient paths than solos
30
Q

Describe Collective Intelligence in fish predator avoidance

A
  • Mosquitofish had to choose between two arms of a Y-maze (one contained a replica predator, the other did not)
  • Shoal size varied: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16
  • Solution accuracy was measured as the fish successfully avoiding the arm with the predator
  • Result: larger shoal sizes were increasingly more accurate (achieved through improved Collective sensing)
31
Q

What do Argentine ant colonies have the ability to do?

A

solve complex optimization problems – e.g. the “shortest path through a maze” problem

32
Q

Describe the mechanism of Argentine ant colonies

A
  • Individuals explore in search of food
  • They lay a pheromone trail as they walk
  • Others follow pheromone trails they come across; they also add their own pheromone
  • Shorter paths accumulate pheromone more quickly than longer paths as roundtrip is made more quickly on shorter paths
  • Positive feedback leads to signal (pheromone) on short path being amplified à shorter path becomes favored
  • Pheromone evaporates at a certain rate -> longer trail eventually becomes disused
33
Q

What are the spaghetti towe experiments a demonstration of

A

Collective innovation

34
Q

Describe the Spaghetti tower experiments

A
  • Groups of human participants were instructed to build as high a tower as they could out of spaghetti and plasticine.
  • Every 2.5 minutes one person was made to leave and a new person joined, and the group then began to build from scratch again.
  • = Successive generations of “micro-societies” trying to solve the same task
35
Q

What were the results of the Spaghetti tower experiments

A

Height of tower increased over “generations”
-> Knowledge and skills were accumulating in the micro-societies over time