DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Learning and Collective Intelligence in Animal Groups

这个项目研究了群体中的动物如何集体学习它们的环境，以及这种学习过程如何导致“集体智慧”，从而群体可以比任何一个个体做出更准确的决定。大多数社会动物，如鱼，具有非常有限的沟通和协调手段，目前尚不清楚这些动物是否能够在这些限制下学会利用潜在的集体智慧。该项目将建立一个集体学习的理论模型，初步结果表明，在独居动物中普遍存在的学习规则，在群体环境中也能非常有效，即使个体之间的协调有限，也能导致接近最佳的集体智慧水平。然后，集体学习模型的具体预测将在两种社会性动物物种——鱼和人类身上进行实验测试。通过使用两个非常不同的物种，可以测试模型的通用性，并揭示集体学习的一般机制。这些实验将为动物群体的学习过程提供重要的见解，这是以前未被探索过的。它们也可能对人类如何在群体环境中学习提供具体的见解，并可能提出提高人类群体集体学习效率的技术。

This project examines how animals in groups collectively learn about their environment and how this learning process may result in "collective intelligence", whereby the group can make more accurate decisions than any single individual can. Most social animals, such as fish, have very limited means of communication and coordination, and it is currently unknown whether these animals can learn to exploit the potential collective intelligence under these constraints. This project will develop a theoretical model of collective learning, and preliminary results suggest that the same learning rules known to be ubiquitous in solitary animals can also be highly efficient in a group context and can lead to near-optimal levels of collective intelligence, even with limited coordination between individuals. The specific predictions of the collective learning model will then be experimentally tested using two social animal species: fish and humans. By using two very different species, the generality of the model can be tested, and general mechanisms of collective learning will be uncovered. These experiments will provide important insights into the learning process in animal groups, which has previously been unexplored. They may also give specific insight into how humans learn in a group context and may suggest techniques to increase the efficiency of collective learning in human groups.