DHB Modeling Time, Space, and Behavior: Combining ABM & GIS to Create Typologies of Playgroup Dynamics in Preschool Children

自组织的动物和人类群体日益成为对社会动力学感兴趣的科学家研究的焦点。虽然有大量的文献研究动物群体的行为互动模式，但在社会科学领域却没有可比的研究成果。从狩猎采集者到城市居民，人类有组织的聚会出现在所有文化中。这些群体的范围从已婚夫妇和同事到大型人群和社区，每种类型都有独特的结构和历史。然而，尚不清楚的是，每个具有独特属性和偏好的个体是如何促成这些群体的形成的。人们对群体中观察到的社会发展过程是如何改变其组成部分的了解就更少了。由于这种复杂性，本研究汇集了一个多学科团队，将人类发展、计算机模拟、生物学、数学和地理学整合在一起，研究基本的社会过程如何对人类发展和生命历程轨迹至关重要。为了研究社会性的基本属性，这项研究将用3年的时间观察和分类3-5岁的孩子如何以及在哪里形成群体和双元友谊。对幼儿的研究对于回答关于群体形成和群体稳定性的过程驱动的问题是偶然的，原因有以下几点：(1)这是许多儿童第一次持续地接触到大量的同龄人——相当大的合格人群可以提供关于群体形成和进化过程中的选择过程的信息；(2)由于这一年龄组的社会经验相对缺乏，应该有所有社会实体共同的基本和简单的过程组成部分（例如，交流信号的交换，角色分化）；(3)研究儿童与同伴建立和维持关系的能力具有长期的社会效用——这种现象与学术和社会能力密切相关。在三年的数据收集结束后，将构建行为和地理空间数据的计算机模型，以告知科学家和政策制定者这些关键的社会过程是如何出现和演变的。虽然研究的重点是儿童，但这一努力的核心是试图理解和模拟理解所有社会过程的互惠进化动力。因此，这项研究涉及多个科学学科，从人类发展、人类学、社会学到计算机科学、物理学、生物学和应用数学。

Self-organizing animal and human groups have increasingly become the focus of research by scientists interested in social dynamics. While a substantial amount of literature exists on the behavioral interaction patterns found in animal groups, there is not a comparable body of work in the social sciences. From hunter-gatherers to city-dwellers, structured gatherings of humans appear in all cultures. These groups range from married couples and co-workers to large crowds and neighborhoods, with each type having a distinct structure and history. What is not clear, however, is how individuals, each with unique attributes and preferences, contribute to the formation of these groups. Even less is known about how the socio-developmental processes observed in groups modify its constituents. Because of this complexity, this study brings together a multi-disciplinary team that integrates human development, computer simulation, biology, mathematics, and geography to study how fundamental social processes are critical to human development and life-course trajectory. To investigate the fundamental properties of sociality, this study will, for 3 years, observe and catalog how and where 3-5 year old children form groups and dyadic friendships. The study of young children is fortuitous for answering process-driven questions about group formation and group stability for several reasons: (1) This is the first time that many of the children are consistently exposed to a large number of peers -- the sizeable pool of eligibles can provide information about the selection process in the formation and evolution of groups; (2) Given the relative social inexperience of this age group, there should be basic and simple process components common to all social entities (e.g., exchange of communicative signals, role differentiation); and (3) There is long-term societal utility for studying children's abilities to form and maintain relationships with their peers -- this phenomena has been closely associated with academic and social competencies. At the end of three years of data collection, computer models from the behavioral and geo-spatial data will be constructed to inform scientists and policy makers about how these critical social processes emerge and evolve. Although the focus is on young children, the core of this endeavor is an attempt to understand and model the reciprocal evolutionary dynamics basic to understanding all social processes. As such, the research is informed by multiple scientific disciplines ranging from human development, anthropology, and sociology to computer science, physics, biology, and applied mathematics.