GRCDI

Steiner, I. D. (1966) Models for Inferring Relationships Between Group Size and Potential Group Productivity Behavioural Science, 11(4) The goal of the Collective Behaviour and Intelligence seminar series is to explore the phenomena of collective behaviour and intelligence, the mechanisms underlying them and their consequences, through reading and discussion of classic and current literature. These ...

Read more

Speaker: Dr Giacomo Melis (University of Stirling) I discuss the relation between some characterisations of inferential reasoning in philosophy and comparative psychology. I point out some analogies and differences, I suggest that each camp may have something to learn by engaging with the other, and I outline two broad ways in which this may happen. On ...

Read more

Co-sponsored by School of Psychology and Neuroscience seminars series and Global Research Centre for Diverse Intelligences Speaker: Dr Juliane Bräuer (Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology) Dogs show an extraordinaire capacity to understand, communicate, and cooperate with us. However, what we know about the social-cognitive skills of dogs comes from observations and experiments performed in WEIRD societies. Around ...

Read more

Special session with co-authors of draft paper: – Zara Anwarzai (Department of Philosophy and Cognitive Science Program at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) – Cody Moser (Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences, University of California, Merced, CA, USA and School of Collective Intelligence, Mohammed VI Polytechnic Institute, Rabat, Morocco) – Hannah Dromiack (Department ...

Read more

Speaker: Dr Neil Bramley (University of Edinburgh) Many aspects of our physical world are hidden. For example, it is hard to estimate how heavy an object is from visual observation alone. This project uses physics simulated environments to examine how children and adults actively “experiment” within the physical world to discover latent properties. To do this, I ...

Read more

Speakers: discussion led by Amanda Seed (School of Psychology and Neuroscience), Derek Ball (Department of Philosophy), Josep Call (School of Psychology and Neuroscience) and Gabriel Ramos-Fernandez (National Autonomous University of Mexico) These sessions were prompted by the idea, discussed during previous seminar sessions, that a group might use a collective representation to interact with the environment. ...

Read more

Speaker: Malinda Carpenter (School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews) It seems to me that many very different concepts have been conflated under the same term ‘collective behaviour’ (or ‘collective intelligence’ or ‘collective representations’).  In this session, I would like to start a discussion in which we take a step back and consider, ...

Read more

  The Global Research Centre for Diverse Intelligences hosted a ‘DeepSeek Roundtable Discussion’ on Friday 28 February 2025, 10:00-11:00am. This informal discussion included participants from the School of Computer Science and the School of Psychology and Neuroscience; the discussion was open to all staff and students at the University of St Andrews.

Speakers: discussion led by Amanda Seed (School of Psychology and Neuroscience), Derek Ball (Department of Philosophy), Josep Call (School of Psychology and Neuroscience) and Gabriel Ramos-Fernandez (National Autonomous University of Mexico) These sessions were prompted by the idea, discussed during previous seminar sessions, that a group might use a collective representation to interact with the environment. ...

Read more

Speaker: Tugce Cuhadaroglu (St Andrews Business School, Department of Economics) Abstract: What does the notion of collective representation mean to an economist? In this talk, I’ll explore how economists from different fields think about this concept—where their views overlap, and where they diverge. I’ll also draw some lines between collective representation and related ideas like collective behavior ...

Read more

Speaker: Dr Christophe Heintz (Central European University, Vienna, Austria and Visiting Scholar at the GRCDI, University of St Andrews) This presentation examines the diverse strategies for satisfying informative intentions, arguing that ostensive communication represents just one approach within a broader spectrum of intentional behaviours. Evidence suggests that both humans and non-human great apes routinely satisfy informative intentions without ...

Read more

Speaker: Kenneth Mavor (School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews) It is 100 years since the social psychologist William McDougall (1920) wrote “The Group Mind”.  Innovative, but perhaps too meta-physical for the audience at the time, Psychology largely responded by asserting that all (human) collective phenomena were simple aggregates of individual psychology.  However, we ...

Read more

Speaker: Dr Christophe Heintz (Central European University, Vienna, Austria and Visiting Scholar at the GRCDI, University of St Andrews) In place of an abstract, Christophe would like to discuss the following themes: Further debates based on the talk I shall give on May 6th: “Diverse pathways to satisfying informative intentions”, in particular concerning: i- recognising humans’ diverse ways to ...

Read more

Speaker: Andrew Whiten (School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews) In this talk I’ll bring together some recent reviews and empirical studies by me and my collaborators that explore links between collective intelligence, culture and cumulative culture. My starting point is a theme issue of Phil Trans B for which I was an editor in 2021/2 (1), ...

Read more

ARCANI is a network-of-networks dedicated to Accelerating Research Collaboration on Artificial and Natural Intelligences. The project brings together 7 networks around the world to advance research on biological and artificial intelligences.

These sessions were prompted by the idea, discussed during previous seminar sessions, that a group might use a collective representation to interact with the environment. For example, in a colony of ants, the pheromone trail itself, as a dynamic pattern that grows and shrinks according to the interaction of the colony with the environment, might ...

Read more

Join us 18 – 20 July for the for the Diverse Intelligences Summit 2025, hosted by the Global Research Centre for Diverse Intelligences at the University of St Andrews. The event aims to bring together people from diverse disciplines and academic orientations including animal cognition, artificial intelligence/machine learning, collective behaviour and developmental psychology, among others. ...

Read more

Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) is a machine learning paradigm in which an agent learns to make decisions by interacting with an environment to maximise cumulative reward. In recent years, RL has emerged as one of the most exciting and impactful areas of Artificial Intelligence. Its significance was underscored by the 2024 Turing Award awarded to ...

Read more

On Tuesday, November 18th, the Global Research Centre for Diverse Intelligences (GRCDI) will host a presentation and discussion on the progress of COST Action AFFECT-EVO and the challenges faced so far, led by Dr Tom Smulders from Newcastle University. This event is open to all, and will be of particular interest to those looking to ...

Read more

Abstract All known languages are made up of statistically coherent sequences - words - whose frequency distribution follows a power law known as a Zipfian distribution. Despite the ubiquity of these features across languages their origins are poorly understood. In this talk, I will argue that they arise because they facilitate learning and therefore emerge ...

Read more

The GRCDI is pleased to welcome back Professor Inbal Arnon for a discussion of her 2025 paper “What enables human language? A biocultural framework”, published in Science. Prof. Arnon will provide a short introduction to the paper at the beginning of the session, but the intention is for the focus to remain primarily on a ...

Read more