{"pk":29582,"title":"Abstraction and Cognitive Flexibility in Collective Problem Solving:\nThe Role of Diversity","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Groups of interacting individuals are often found to have an\nadvantage over individuals in contexts of complex problem\nsolving. We suggest that social interaction allows group\nmembers to share diverse introspections, perspectives and\nstrategies, promoting the formation of more abstract\nproblem representations, which – in turn – apply more\nflexibly to new problem contexts. In a reinforcement\nlearning task inspired by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test\n(WCST), participants categorized aliens as friendly or\ndangerous based on an underlying rule specifying feature\ncombinations. After a number of correctly categorized\ntrials, the rule would change (without explicit notification).\nParticipants could solve the task by learning every new\nrule, but could also discover an underlying abstract rule,\nwhich would facilitate faster recovery from local rule\nchanges. We compared pairs of participants individually\ntrained on different rules (diversity pairs), with pairs trained\non the same rule (non-diversity pairs), and individuals. We\nfound that diversity pairs outperformed non- diverse pairs\nand individuals. Our findings suggest that diversity in prior\nexperience benefits groups, likely due to processes of\nabstraction and cognitive flexibility.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"problem solving; diversity; social interaction;\ncognitive flexibility; learning"}],"section":"Poster Session 1","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/21b426gm","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Tatiana","middle_name":"Goregliad","last_name":"Fjaellingsdal","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Lübeck","department":""},{"first_name":"Cordula","middle_name":"","last_name":"Vesper","name_suffix":"","institution":"Aarhus University","department":""},{"first_name":"Christoffer","middle_name":"L.","last_name":"Olesen","name_suffix":"","institution":"Aarhus University","department":""},{"first_name":"Kristian","middle_name":"","last_name":"Tylén","name_suffix":"","institution":"Aarhus University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2020-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/29582/galley/19441/download/"}]}