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Comparing cooperative geometric puzzle solving in ants versus humans.

Tabea Dreyer1, Amir Haluts2, Amos Korman3

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Simple minds like ants scale collective intelligence efficiently, while complex brains like humans need communication for effective group problem-solving. Ants excel in groups, humans in individuals, highlighting coordination

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Area of Science:

  • Collective intelligence and comparative cognition
  • Behavioral ecology and swarm intelligence

Background:

  • Biological ensembles face challenges using collective intelligence, but coordination issues can hinder group cognition.
  • Comparing collective vs. individual cognition is difficult due to differing problem sets across scales.
  • Navigating loads in complex environments offers a rare, comparable task for studying group problem-solving.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To empirically compare problem-solving skills and cognitive traits across species (humans and ants) and group sizes.
  • To investigate how collective motion and internal states influence group performance in a navigation task.
  • To understand the role of communication in cooperative efficiency for different cognitive systems.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized a 'piano-movers' load maneuvering puzzle to challenge both humans and ants.
  • Compared performance across varying group sizes for each species.
  • Analyzed emergent cognitive skills and the impact of restricted communication in human groups.

Main Results:

  • Ants demonstrated enhanced group performance in larger groups, with collective motion leading to emergent cognitive skills.
  • Humans outperformed ants on average due to a better grasp of the puzzle's global nature, but individual performance was superior.
  • Restricted communication in human groups led to consensus-seeking behaviors that negatively impacted performance, resembling ant behavior.

Conclusions:

  • Simple cognitive systems (ants) exhibit scalability in collective intelligence without complex communication.
  • Complex cognitive systems (humans) require effective communication to achieve efficient cooperation and avoid performance degradation.
  • The study highlights how different cognitive architectures influence the scalability and efficiency of group problem-solving.