PhD opportunity at University of Rochester on collective cognition

Below we present some of the relevant topics we are interested in. If you like them please apply following the next steps.

Collective Rationality

Making decisions as a group allows animals to combine their sensory and information-processing abilities, often resulting in more accurate decisions than those made by individuals. In this project we examine whether and when the collective action of individual agents can override cases of individual irrationality, i.e. whether the faster, heuristic decision making by individuals can be tempered by a second, collective process, leading to more optimal outcomes. Thus, we propose to address three fundamental questions: to what extent is rational decision-making unique to our species or to individual organisms; can collectives produce reasoning-like processes or outcomes in their decision-making; and how can we enhance the power of both individual and collective intelligence? Our lab studies these questions using both zebrafish and homing pigeons.

Collective Problem-Solving and Behavioural Coordination

Successfully navigating the world in collectives requires solving problems where members of the group may need to align their actions or take on different roles in a coordinated manner. To efficiently do this, group members need to make use of information both about their environment and about their conspecifics. In our lab, we study how common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) deploy visual attention when solving such problems in a naturalistic setting. We use a combination of precise eye-tracking as well as deep learning and machine vision tools to track and quantify the gaze of free-moving, socially interacting marmosets as they are engaged in coordinated problem-solving (in collaboration with Jude Mitchell).

Collective Navigation

Many species travel in groups, and the challenges and opportunities that come with navigating collectively can have significant consequences for both the individual and the collective. We study the mechanisms that allow individuals in groups to jointly make directional decisions, as well as the factors that influence the quality of these decisions. In theory, navigational accuracy should increase as group size increases (the “many wrongs” effect), and we are interested in what might make or break whether such improvement is observed empirically.

Emergence of Conventions

Conventions are an integral aspect of human communication and behavior. They can be defined as arbitrary and self-sustaining practices that emerge in a population and facilitate solving coordination problems in repeated multi-agent interactions. Several open questions remain about the conditions under which conventions spontaneously form, how quickly they form and how stable they are under different regimes, and what cognitive prerequisites enable their expression. To address these questions, in our lab we study the experimental emergence of conventions under different conditions through computerized multi-player tasks with human dyads. The findings promise to yield significant advances for our understanding of how groups solve coordination problems, and thus also have potential impacts on our increasingly interconnected societies.

Psychology of Superorganisms

Collective cognition refers to the ability of a group to process information and achieve higher cognitive performance than an individual working alone. Our research applies psychological concepts and techniques to study collective cognition in ant colonies, drawing inspiration from the superorganism concept, which likens an integrated insect society to a single organism. Using this approach, we have discovered how colonies differ from individual ants in solving cognitive tasks and how collective cognition emerges. For instance, applying neural models to collective cognition in ants reveals striking similarities between how brains and colonies reach consensus decisions.

Collective Learning

We have recently begun exploring a new dimension of collective cognition: collective learning. While collective cognition is often studied as a singular event, animals in nature frequently encounter the same tasks multiple times, allowing past experiences to shape future decisions. Our research thus focuses on how individuals in a group acquire, retain, and apply information collectively, leading to improved performance over time. For example, in homing pigeons, group decisions shaped by past experiences can improve progressively over generations—a process known as cumulative cultural evolution.

Individual Reasoning

The ability to reason was long considered a defining and unique characteristic of our species. Nonetheless, over the past few decades, an increasing number of studies have demonstrated non-human animals’ to reason in a variety of situations: for example, cognitive experiments on one aspect of reasoning, inferential reasoning by exclusion, have been particularly flourishing and have come to include a phylogenetically broad range of species. However, good performance on traditional tests (e.g., the “two cups” task) does not necessarily reflect inferential understanding. In this project, our goal is to study inferential reasoning by exclusion in free-ranging seabirds, by combining critical tests with control procedures to determine thoroughly the cognitive mechanisms at play.