Ralf Kurvers (MPI for Human Development), “Individual, social and ecological drivers of human collective foraging”

Foraging complexity and competitive social challenges are considered key drivers of human cognition. Yet, we still have a poor understanding of the decision-making mechanisms underlying foraging behavior, especially in social contexts. In this talk, I will combine immersive lab experiments, field work using high-resolution tracking, and computational and agent-based models to uncover the mechanisms guiding human foraging decisions. I hope to convince you that foraging provides a rich test bed to study a broad range of cognitive processes, such as memory, learning, and evidence accumulation, and that the current technological advancements allow us to do this even in the challenging conditions of the natural world.

This talk is part of David Mezey‘s course “Introduction to Modeling Collective Behavior, ” a seminar on collective behavior research, combined with multiple interactive elements.