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Self-organized division of cognitive labor

Often members of a group benefit from dividing the group’s task into separate components, where each member specializes their role so as to accomplish only one of the components. While this division of labor phenomenon has been observed with respect to both manual and cognitive labor, there is no cl...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Andrade-Lotero, Edgar, Goldstone, Robert L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8289079/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34280216
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254532
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author Andrade-Lotero, Edgar
Goldstone, Robert L.
author_facet Andrade-Lotero, Edgar
Goldstone, Robert L.
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description Often members of a group benefit from dividing the group’s task into separate components, where each member specializes their role so as to accomplish only one of the components. While this division of labor phenomenon has been observed with respect to both manual and cognitive labor, there is no clear understanding of the cognitive mechanisms allowing for its emergence, especially when there are multiple divisions possible and communication is limited. Indeed, maximization of expected utility often does not differentiate between alternative ways in which individuals could divide labor. We developed an iterative two-person game in which there are multiple ways of dividing labor, but in which it is not possible to explicitly negotiate a division. We implemented the game both as a human experimental task and as a computational model. Our results show that the majority of human dyads can finish the game with an efficient division of labor. Moreover, we fitted our computational model to the behavioral data, which allowed us to explain how the perceived similarity between a player’s actions and the task’s focal points guided the players’ choices from one round to the other, thus bridging the group dynamics and its underlying cognitive process. Potential applications of this model outside cognitive science include the improvement of cooperation in human groups, multi-agent systems, as well as human-robot collaboration.
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spelling pubmed-82890792021-07-31 Self-organized division of cognitive labor Andrade-Lotero, Edgar Goldstone, Robert L. PLoS One Research Article Often members of a group benefit from dividing the group’s task into separate components, where each member specializes their role so as to accomplish only one of the components. While this division of labor phenomenon has been observed with respect to both manual and cognitive labor, there is no clear understanding of the cognitive mechanisms allowing for its emergence, especially when there are multiple divisions possible and communication is limited. Indeed, maximization of expected utility often does not differentiate between alternative ways in which individuals could divide labor. We developed an iterative two-person game in which there are multiple ways of dividing labor, but in which it is not possible to explicitly negotiate a division. We implemented the game both as a human experimental task and as a computational model. Our results show that the majority of human dyads can finish the game with an efficient division of labor. Moreover, we fitted our computational model to the behavioral data, which allowed us to explain how the perceived similarity between a player’s actions and the task’s focal points guided the players’ choices from one round to the other, thus bridging the group dynamics and its underlying cognitive process. Potential applications of this model outside cognitive science include the improvement of cooperation in human groups, multi-agent systems, as well as human-robot collaboration. Public Library of Science 2021-07-19 /pmc/articles/PMC8289079/ /pubmed/34280216 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254532 Text en © 2021 Andrade-Lotero, Goldstone https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Andrade-Lotero, Edgar
Goldstone, Robert L.
Self-organized division of cognitive labor
title Self-organized division of cognitive labor
title_full Self-organized division of cognitive labor
title_fullStr Self-organized division of cognitive labor
title_full_unstemmed Self-organized division of cognitive labor
title_short Self-organized division of cognitive labor
title_sort self-organized division of cognitive labor
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8289079/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34280216
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254532
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