Collective Information Processing and Pattern Formation in Swarms, Flocks, and Crowds

The spontaneous organization of collective activities in animal groups and societies has attracted a considerable amount of attention over the last decade. This kind of coordination often permits group‐living species to achieve collective tasks that are far beyond single individuals' capabiliti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Topics in cognitive science 2009-07, Vol.1 (3), p.469-497
Main Authors: Moussaid, Mehdi, Garnier, Simon, Theraulaz, Guy, Helbing, Dirk
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Behavior, Animal
Cognition
Collective behaviors
Distributed cognition
Group Processes
Humans
Information transfer
Interpersonal Relations
Living beings
Models, Theoretical
Self-organization
Social Behavior
Social interactions
Spatial Behavior
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Summary:The spontaneous organization of collective activities in animal groups and societies has attracted a considerable amount of attention over the last decade. This kind of coordination often permits group‐living species to achieve collective tasks that are far beyond single individuals' capabilities. In particular, a key benefit lies in the integration of partial knowledge of the environment at the collective level. In this contribution, we discuss various self‐organization phenomena in animal swarms and human crowds from the point of view of information exchange among individuals. In particular, we provide a general description of collective dynamics across species and introduce a classification of these dynamics not only with respect to the way information is transferred among individuals but also with regard to the knowledge processing at the collective level. Finally, we highlight the fact that the individual’s ability to learn from past experiences can have a feedback effect on the collective dynamics, as experienced with the development of behavioral conventions in pedestrian crowds.
ISSN:1756-8757
1756-8765
DOI:10.1111/j.1756-8765.2009.01028.x