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Thinking about possibilities plays a critical role in the choices humans make throughout their lives. Despite this, the influence of individuals' ability to consider what is possible on culture has been largely overlooked. We propose that the ability to reason about future possibilities or prospective cognition, has consequences for cultural change, possibly facilitating the process of cumulative cultural evolution. In particular, by considering potential future costs and benefits of specific behaviours, prospective cognition may lead to a more flexible use of cultural behaviours. In species with limited planning abilities, this may lead to the development of cultures that promote behaviours with future benefits, circumventing this limitation. Here, we examine these ideas from a comparative perspective, considering the relationship between human and nonhuman assessments of future possibilities and their cultural capacity to invent new solutions and improve them over time. Given the methodological difficulties of assessing prospective cognition across species, we focus on planning, for which we have the most data in other species. Elucidating the role of prospective cognition in culture will help us understand the variability in when and how we see culture expressed, informing ongoing debates, such as that surrounding which social learning mechanisms underlie culture. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Thinking about possibilities: mechanisms, ontogeny, functions and phylogeny’.

In this study, I present a theoretical social learning model to investigate how confirmation bias affects opinions when agents exchange information over a social network. Hence, besides exchanging opinions with friends, agents observe a public sequence of potentially ambiguous signals and interpret it according to a rule that includes confirmation bias. First, this study shows that regardless of level of ambiguity both for people or networked society, only two types of opinions can be formed, and both are biased. However, one opinion type is less biased than the other depending on the state of the world. The size of both biases depends on the ambiguity level and relative magnitude of the state and confirmation biases. Hence, long-run learning is not attained even when people impartially interpret ambiguity. Finally, analytically confirming the probability of emergence of the less-biased consensus when people are connected and have different priors is difficult. Hence, I used simulations to analyze its determinants and found three main results: i) some network topologies are more conducive to consensus efficiency, ii) some degree of partisanship enhances consensus efficiency even under confirmation bias and iii) open-mindedness (i.e. when partisans agree to exchange opinions with opposing partisans) might inhibit efficiency in some cases., Status: Accepted (Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier)

This article explores the effect of meeting opportunities between local urban and nonlocal residents on locals’ prejudice against migrant children in China by focusing on three contexts: friendships, schools and neighbourhoods. China’s hukou policy creates a boundary between urban and rural residents, which also takes the form of locals and nonlocals in rural-to-urban migration. Urban public schools with a mix of local and migrant students offer a chance to observe the intergroup relationships between local and nonlocal students as well as their parents. Using two waves of data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), this study examines how changes in migrant friend groups, schoolmates and neighbours of local children affect changes in their parents’ prejudice, as seen among a sample of 1630 student-parent pairs. With longitudinal data, this study mitigates the effect of reverse causality between intergroup contact and prejudice. The findings show that parents whose children have more migrant friends have less prejudice, under certain conditions. Additionally, more nonlocal students in a school relates to less prejudice, especially among parents who are more embedded in the school life. Furthermore, local families with low socio-economic status experience an increase in prejudice, potentially due to an increased feeling of threat. Additionally, this article finds that prejudiced attitudes spread through the social networks of children and parents at the school level. This study emphasises the importance of different contexts of meeting opportunities and sheds new light on the generalisability of the (extended) contact hypothesis to the understudied context of Chinese internal migration.

This preliminary study reports an empirical investigation of whether an asynchronous teaching method targeting presentation skills based on social learning theory will facilitate learners’ selfefficacy in English learning. The asynchronous teaching method applied in this study employed a mediational process with four stages: attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. Thirty female Japanese university students participated in a fourteen-week training. The group was divided into high and low groups according to the initial results of the English Self-efficacy Questionnaire developed by Matsunuma (2006). The results of the first week were compared with that of the fourteenth week. The analysis indicated no significant differences in the gain between the two groups. The results suggest that it is necessary to include a process for students to realize their growth through this training. Therefore, further study is necessary on how the asynchronous teaching method based on the social learning theory applied in this study should be modified to facilitate learners’ self-efficacy in English learning.

This paper investigates how the pricing policy of a revenue-maximizing monopolist is influenced by the social learning dynamics of customers who use online reviews to estimate the quality of the product. A salient feature of our problem is that the customers’ willingness to pay, and hence the demand function, evolves over time in conjunction with the online reviews. The monopolist strives to maximize its total expected revenue over a finite horizon by adjusting prices in response to these dynamics. The revenue maximization problem is studied using two different review models: a quality-based review model, where customers report their experienced quality, and a value-based review model, where reviews internalize experienced quality as well as the purchase price. To formulate the problem in tractable form, we derive a fluid model that provides a good approximation of the system dynamics when the volume of sales is large. This formulation lends itself to key structural insights into the interactions between optimal pricing policies and review dynamics. In particular, we identify critical time scales and social learning regimes that sharply separate the efficacy of dynamic pricing vis-à-vis fixed-price strategies. Furthermore, we demonstrate the impact of the quality-based and value-based review models on key structural properties of the optimal pricing policies. These structural insights are also elucidated in an illustrative simulation study based on data from an online marketplace. This paper was accepted by Gabriel Weintraub, revenue management and market analytics. Supplemental Material: Data and the e-companion are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4387 .

Does social learning and subsequent private information processing differ depending on whether the observer shares the same group identity as the predecessor whose action is observed? In this paper, we conduct a lab experiment to answer this question, in which subjects first observe a social signal and then receive a private signal. We find that subjects put greater weights on the social signal if they share with the predecessor the same group identity that is induced in the experimental environment. We also provide suggestive evidence that such an ingroup-outgroup difference cannot be explained by individuals' beliefs of the predecessor's rationality. Moreover, heterogeneous effects of group identity exist in weights given to the subsequent private signal: Compared to when the predecessor is an outgroup, those who have learned from an ingroup predecessor put a greater (smaller) weight on the private signal if it contradicts (confirms) the social signal. We conjecture that such group effects are consistent with the perspective that group identity works as a framing device and brings about certain decision heuristics in the social signal phase, which no longer exist in the private signal phase.The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10683-022-09788-1.

Population size has been proposed to promote cumulative culture in humans. Experimental evidence from adult humans suggests that one explanatory mechanism might involve combining beneficial information from multiple models. However, it is possible that such combinatory social learning requires cognitive capacities restricted to adult humans. In our task, children aged 5–10 were exposed to two models who consecutively searched a 3×3 array for rewards. Models revealed different correct and incorrect reward locations. This information could be used by the child to maximise their own score on the same task. We were interested in children's ability to select rewarded locations, and avoid unrewarded ones, revealed by both models. We also manipulated the spatial and temporal displacement of the information available. Results showed that the youngest children were unable to fully benefit from the additional information provided by the two models under spatial and/or temporal displacement. Such displacement likely applies in most real-world cases of cumulative culture therefore our result may offer insight into the constraints on cumulative culture in nonhumans.

Resumen Este artículo presenta resultados de una estrategia formativa de tipo colaborativo para el diseño de ambientes blended learning (BL) en competencias lectoras, dirigida a profesores en formación. Metodológicamente, se acude a la investigación basada en diseño (IBD), ya que esta reconoce el diseño en dos dimensiones: como objeto de estudio y como implementación didáctica para promover aprendizajes. Los datos obtenidos se analizaron mediante el uso del software Nvivo 11, con el fin de hallar y explicar las relaciones existentes entre las categorías propuestas en el estudio. El análisis de los resultados mostró que el trabajo colaborativo representa para los profesores en formación un reto complejo, pero de gran aporte en el diseño didáctico. Se concluye que trabajar colaborativamente requiere formación en interdependencia positiva, y simultáneamente fortalece competencias didácticas y tecnológicas implicadas en el diseño de experiencias de aprendizaje desde el modelo BL, importantes para el desempeño profesional docente. Abstract This article presents the results of a collaborative training strategy for designing blended learning (b-l) environments in reading skills aimed at teachers in training. Methodologically, a design-based research strategy is used since it allows approaching creation in two dimensions: an object of study and a didactic implementation to promote learning. The data obtained were analyzed using Nvivo 11 software to find and explain the relationships between the categories proposed in the study. The analysis of the results allowed us to establish that collaborative work represents a complex challenge for teachers in training, but a great contribution in the didactic design of b-l environments in reading skills. It was concluded that working collaboratively requires training that develops assertive communication processes and positive interdependence, important for professional performance. Likewise, the scope of the collaborative strategy in the strengthening of didactic and technological competencies involved in the blended learning model was evidenced.

Online discussion research has mainly been conducted using case methods. This article proposes a method for comparative analysis based on network metrics such as information entropy and global network efficiency as more holistic measures characterizing social learning group dynamics. We applied social learning optimization analysis of networks (SLOAN) to a data set consisting of Coursera courses from a range of disciplines. We examined the relationship of discussion forum uses and measures of network efficiency, characterized by the information flow through the network. Discussion forums vary greatly in size and in use. Courses with a greater prevalence of subject-related versus procedural talk differed significantly in seeking but not disseminating behaviors in massive open online course discussion forums. Subject-related talk was related to higher network efficiency and had higher seeking and disseminating scores overall. We discuss the value of SLOAN for social learning and argue for the experimental study of online discussion optimization using a discussion post recommendation system for maximizing social learning.

Studies conducted between the 1950s and 1970s found that the principles embodied in the First Amendment constituted a “clear norm” endorsed by large majorities of community leaders and virtually all legal practitioners and scholars. This consensus has since weakened under the strain of arguments that racist slurs, epithets, and other forms of expression that demean social identities are an intolerable affront to egalitarian values. Guided by the theory that norms are transmitted through social learning, we show that these developments have spurred a dramatic realignment in public tolerance of offensive expression about race, gender, and religious groups. Tolerance of such speech has declined overall, and its traditional relationships with ideology, education, and age have diminished or reversed. Speech subject to changing norms of tolerance ranges from polemic to scientific inquiry, the fringes to the mainstream of political discourse, and left to right, raising profound questions about the scope of permissible debate in contemporary American politics.

The family is the most basic institution in any society. The existence of a healthy society is related to the existence of a strong family institution. It is accepted that the problems experienced by the individual are affected by the family and socialization process. In recent studies, it is stated that some negative behaviours that are not accepted by the society are related to the family structure. The problems experienced by the individual in the family environment during childhood can negatively affect his/her behaviour and lead him/her to turn to crime.Crime and punishment are twins. From past to present, social punishment practices have been regulated according to the changing social structure. Traditional penal systems generally practice confinement by choosing to isolate offenders from society. However, incarceration did not succeed in re-committing the crime. This situation is better understood with the increase in the number of prisons and the overcrowding of the prison population. In recent years, some changes have been made in traditional penal systems. The probation system, as a part of these changes, aims to control the perpetrator within the society. Thus, it is tried to ensure that the perpetrator of the crime is approved by the society.The aim of this study is to examine the effect of the family on the delinquency of young people subject to probation within the scope of sociological crime theories, social learning and social control theories, and to evaluate the adequacy of probation, which has an effective importance and value in our country, although it is not very long. In the field research, in which the qualitative research method was applied, in-depth interviews were conducted with 60 people between the ages of 18-30 who were subject to inspection at the "Istanbul Anatolian Probation Directorate". According to the results obtained, it was concluded that there is a significant relationship between young people committing crimes and family structures. Again, in line with the data obtained from the young people who were subjected to inspection, it was revealed that the system needed to be developed., Aile her toplumda en temel kurumdur. Toplumun sağlıklı bir şekilde varlığını sürdürebilmesi, güçlü bir aile kurumunun varlığı ile ilgilidir. Bireyin yaşadığı sorunların aile ve sosyalizasyon sürecinden etkilendiği kabul edilmektedir. Son yıllarda yapılan araştırmalarda, toplum tarafından kabul görmeyen bazı olumsuz davranışların aile yapısı ile bağlantılı olduğu belirtilmektedir. Bireyin çocukluk döneminde aile ortamında yaşadığı sorunlar onun davranışlarını olumsuz etkileyerek suça yönelmesini sağlayabilir.Suç ve ceza birbirinin ikizidir. Geçmişten günümüze toplumsal cezalandırma uygulamalarında, değişen toplumsal yapıya göre düzenlemeler yapılmıştır. Geleneksel ceza sistemleri genel olarak suçluları toplumdan soyutlamayı seçerek kapatma uygular. Ancak hapsetmek suçun yeniden işlenmesi konusunda başarılı olamamıştır. Bu durum cezaevlerinin sayısının artmasıyla ve cezaevlerinin nüfusunun kalabalıklaşmasıyla daha iyi anlaşılmaktadır. Son yıllarda geleneksel ceza sistemlerinde bir takım değişimler yapılmaktadır. Denetimli serbestlik sistemi de bu değişimlerin bir parçası olarak suç işleyeni toplum içinde kontrol etmeyi hedefler. Böylece suç işleyenin toplum içinde onanması sağlanmaya çalışılır.Bu çalışmanın amacı, denetimli serbestliğe tabi tutulan gençlerin suç işlemelerinde ailenin etkisini sosyolojik suç teorilerinden sosyal öğrenme ve sosyal kontrol teorileri kapsamında incelemek ve ülkemizde, çok uzun olmasa da, etkin bir öneme ve değere sahip olan denetimli serbestliğin genç suçluluğunu önlemede yeterliliğini değerlendirmektir. Niteliksel araştırma yönteminin uygulandığı saha araştırmasında, “İstanbul Anadolu Denetimli Serbestlik Müdürlüğü’nde” denetime tabi tutulan 18-30 yaş arası 60 kişiyle derinlemesine görüşme yapılmıştır. Elde edilen sonuçlara göre, gençlerin suç işlemeleri ile aile yapıları arasında anlamlı bir ilişkinin bulunduğu sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. Yine denetime tabi tutulan gençlerden elde edilen veriler doğrultusunda, sistemin geliştirilmesine ihtiyaç duyulduğu hususu ortaya çıkmıştır.

This session features the implementation of an active learning cycle, integrating in-class and out of class learning spaces. To facilitate out of class interactions and collaborative engagement with the material, I used a social annotation platform Perusall, where students analyzed scientific publications collaboratively in preparation for a discussion-based seminar session. The asynchronous group interaction prompted active reading and peer-to-peer learning, created a sense of community and facilitated social interactions both in and outside of class. Students were engaged in conversation across learning spaces and actively participated in a meaningful way. In-class discussions were tailored to address the gaps, solidify the concepts, and make meaningful connections. The active learning cycle inspired motivation and engagement, and greatly enhanced student’s ability to apply knowledge and get a firm grasp of complex concepts. The insights gleaned from “peering into the minds” of my students, helped “tailor” the knowledge transfer to suit that cohort of students. Furthermore, it informed my teaching in the 2nd and 3rd year courses leading to this course. The impact goes beyond “backwards course design” and in fact enables “backwards curricular design”. Participants will have an opportunity to try the platform out and explore it as a potential resource. To participate please bring a laptop, so you can access the platform and demo the simulation!

Tema ovog završnog rada jest primjena društvenog korisnog učenja kroz volonterski angažman. Rad obrađuje tematiku volontiranja i društveno korisnog učenja. U radu su definirane vrste i osnovni pojmovi vezani uz volontiranje. Osim volontiranja, definiran je i pojam društveno korisnog učenja kao pojam usko povezan uz volontiranje. Između ostalog, navedene su prednosti i nedostatci primjene navedenih koncepata kao neformalnih oblika učenja, te njihova ključna razlika. Autorica rada je detaljnije istražila čimbenike koji utječu na motivaciju volontera na uključivanje u volonterski angažman kao i njihove stavove naspram volontiranju. Rezultati empirijskog dijela rada donijeli su uvid u motive uključivanja volontera u volonterski rad. Na kraju rada prezentirani su odgovori ispitanika prikupljeni anonimnom online anketom. Rezultati su analizirani, te objašnjeni metodom komparacije, tekstualnom analizom i grafičkim prikazima., The topic of this final thesis is the application of socially practical learning through volunteer engagement. The paper deals with the topic of volunteering and socially practical learning. The paper defines the types and basic terms related to volunteering. In addition to volunteering, socially beneficial learning is also defined as a term closely related to volunteering. Among other things, the advantages and disadvantages of applying these concepts as informal forms of learning and their key difference are listed. The paper's author reveals the factors that influence the motivation of volunteers to engage in volunteer engagement, as well as their attitudes towards volunteering. The results of the empirical part of the work revealed what motivates volunteers to do volunteer work. The respondents' answers collected through an anonymous online survey were presented at the end of the paper. The results were analysed and explained using the method of comparison, textual analysis and graphical representations.

Interspecific social learning is a main synchronizing mechanism that enables dogs to adapt to the anthropogenic niche. It is not known whether dogs in general possess the capacity of learning from humans or whether more recent selective events have affected their ability to learn from humans. We hypothesized that cooperative and independent working dog breeds may behave differently in a social learning task. Dogs (N = 78 from 16 cooperative and 18 independent breeds) had to detour a transparent, V-shaped wire mesh fence. The experiment consisted of three one-minute-long trials. The control condition did not include a demonstration. In the demonstration condition, the experimenter placed a reward in the inside corner by walking around the fence. Cooperative dogs reached the target significantly faster, while independent dogs did not detour faster in trials 2 and 3 after the human demonstration. Detour latencies were not associated with the keeping conditions and training level of the subjects. As we assembled both test groups from several genetically distantly related breeds, we can exclude the explanation that higher cooperativity emerged only in particular clades of dogs; instead, functional selection for particular working tasks could enhance capacities that affect a wide range of socio-cognitive traits in dogs.

Accurate assessment of predation risk is critical for prey survival during predator–prey interactions. Prey can assess predation risk by the presence of cues dropped by predators themselves, but they can also gather information about risk level through cues released by other prey, avoiding the hazard of being in close proximity to predators. In this study, we examine the ability of anuran larvae (Pelobates cultripes) to detect predation risk indirectly when they are in contact with conspecifics that have been recently exposed to chemical stimuli from natural predators (larvae of aquatic beetles). In a first experiment, we confirmed that larvae exposed to predator cues exhibited innate defensive behavior, indicating that they perceived the risk of predation and, thus, could potentially act as risk indicators for naïve conspecifics. In a second experiment, we observed that unexposed larvae paired with a startled conspecific adjusted their antipredator behavior, presumably by mirroring conspecifics’ behavior and/or using chemical cues from their partners as a risk information source. This cognitive ability of tadpoles to assess predation risk through conspecific cues might play an important role in their interaction with predators, facilitating the early detection of potential threats to elicit appropriate antipredator responses and increase the chances of survival, Financial support was provided by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN), under Grant CGL2015-68670-R

In this article, we integrate cultural evolutionary theory with empirical research from developmental psychology, cultural anthropology, and primatology to explore the role of peer learning in the development of complex instrumental skills and behavioral norms. We show that instrumental imitation, contingent teaching, generative collaboration, and selective copying contribute to domain-specific transmission of knowledge between peers. Stages of development and characteristics inherent to the learner and model influence how and when children learn from each other. Peer learning is persistent across societies despite cultural beliefs that favor adult-child transmission in some settings. Comparative research hints at the possibility that children's greater motivation to interact with and learn from each other may set humans apart from other primates. We conclude by outlining avenues for future research, including how individual characteristics and developmental changes in social networks, motivation, and cognition may contribute to cultural evolution. Publisher PDF

We present an approach to analyse learning outcomes in a broad class of misspecified environments, spanning both single-agent and social learning. We introduce a novel “prediction accuracy” order over subjective models and observe that this makes it possible to partially restore standard martingale convergence arguments that apply under correctly specified learning. Based on this, we derive general conditions to determine when beliefs in a given environment converge to some long-run belief either locally or globally (i.e. from some or all initial beliefs). We show that these conditions can be applied, first, to unify and generalize various convergence results in previously studied settings. Second, they enable us to analyse environments where learning is “slow”, such as costly information acquisition and sequential social learning. In such environments, we illustrate that even if agents learn the truth when they are correctly specified, vanishingly small amounts of misspecification can generate extreme failures of learning.

In socioeconomic environments affected by high and persistent income inequalities and unemployment, there is a need for participative approaches to innovation in support of socioeconomic inclusion. This article explores the features of collective action, in support of socioeconomic inclusion, identified in South African maker communities. Drawing on data from interviews with participants in seven maker communities, the study explores the kinds of value that participants experience through being part of these communities. Value creation is assessed in terms of the five overlapping cycles of value that Wenger et al. (2011) propose are present in successful communities and networks: immediate value, potential value, applied value, realised value, and reframing value. The study finds that all five value cycles are present in the experiences expressed by the South African maker community participants. The value is found to be particularly pronounced in the immediate value and applied value cycles. In respect of socioeconomic inclusion, the findings point to strong currents of social inclusion in the immediate value cycle, and strong elements of both social and economic inclusion in the applied value, realised value, and reframing value cycles.

Many online platforms offer time-locked sales campaigns, whereby products are sold at fixed prices for prespecified lengths of time. Platforms often display some information about previous customers’ purchase decisions during campaigns. Using a dynamic Bayesian persuasion framework, we study how a revenue-maximizing platform should optimize its information policy for such a setting. We reformulate the platform’s problem equivalently by reducing the dimensionality of its message space and proprietary history. Specifically, three messages suffice: a neutral recommendation that induces a customer to make her purchase decision according to her private signal about the product and a positive (respectively (resp.), negative) recommendation that induces her to purchase (resp., not purchase) by ignoring her signal. The platform’s proprietary history can be represented by the net purchase position, a single-dimensional summary statistic that computes the cumulative difference between purchases and nonpurchases made by customers having received the neutral recommendation. Subsequently, we establish structural properties of the optimal policy and uncover the platform’s fundamental trade-off: long-term information (and revenue) generation versus short-term revenue extraction. Further, we propose and optimize over a class of heuristic policies. The optimal heuristic policy provides only neutral recommendations up to a cutoff customer and provides only positive or negative recommendations afterward, with the recommendation being positive if and only if the net purchase position after the cutoff customer exceeds a threshold. This policy is easy to implement and numerically shown to perform well. Finally, we demonstrate the generality of our methodology and the robustness of our findings by relaxing some informational assumptions. This paper was accepted by Gabriel Weintraub, revenue management and market analytics.

Adolescence is a critical period of substance use and substance use disorders (SUD). Social exchanges within the context of adolescent friendships are key to understanding peer influences on the development of SUD. In this study we tested whether dyadic conversations between friends at age 17 are predictive of lifetime SUD diagnosis assessed at age 27. In controlled lab sessions, we observed conversations of 497 17-year-old adolescents and a friend. We coded the general way adolescents talk about deviant actions (i.e., deviancy training), but also specific positive talk about drugs (i.e., drug use talk). At age 27, a diagnostic interview was completed to assess lifetime SUD. Independent sample t-tests (in a selection of substance naïve participants to rule out that potential links would be driven by previous substance use) and structural equation modeling (integrated models, controlling for relevant covariates) were used to test whether deviancy training and/or drug use talk were predictive of lifetime SUD-diagnosis 10 years later. No significant links were found between deviancy training and SUD. Independent sample t-tests and integrated models showed significant associations between drug use talk about alcohol and alcohol use disorder and between drug use talk about cannabis use and cannabis use disorder. The link between talking about hard drugs and hard drug use disorder was marginally significant. Findings illustrate the risk of adolescent social learning in drug use talk with friends based on only 10 minutes of interaction, on the prediction of lifetime SUD assessed 10 years later and informs early interventions to curtail development of SUD. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Although alcohol expectancies and subjective response are independent predictors of drinking, social-cognitive theory suggests that expectancies may distort one's subjective response, creating discrepancies between expected and actual alcohol effects. A recent cross-sectional study found that unmet expectancies (using difference scores) were associated with heavier drinking. However, cross-sectional data cannot establish temporal precedence, and using difference scores ignores important conditional main effects. As such, the current study sought to evaluate how expectancy-subjective response discrepancies predict future drinking using prospective data and an interaction approach. Participants (N = 258) were randomly assigned to consume alcohol (target BAC = .08%) within a placebo-controlled alcohol administration session. Alcohol expectancies and subjective response were assessed across the full valence by arousal affective space using parallel measures. Results indicated a significant high arousal positive (HIGH+) interaction, such that, as HIGH+ expectancies increased, individuals at low and mean levels of HIGH+ subjective response drank more heavily 12 months later. There was also a significant high arousal negative (HIGH-) interaction with a similar pattern of moderated effects. No interactions were found for low arousal effects. These results indicate that individuals with unmet HIGH+ and HIGH- expectancies drink more heavily 12 months later, controlling for prior drinking. This suggests that clinicians may consider recommending specific interventions (e.g., expectancy challenges vs. pharmacotherapy) based upon an individual's levels of expectancies and subjective response to optimize intervention efficacy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Infants have sophisticated knowledge about the physical world, and show enhanced learning about objects that violate physical principles. However, it is unknown whether infants also preferentially learn from the individual who produces an outcome that violates expectations. We investigated whether 15-month-old infants (N = 48) selectively imitate individuals who produce surprising outcomes. In Experiment 1, infants watched an experimenter hide a ball and produce an expected outcome in which the ball was revealed where it was hidden, or a surprising outcome in which the ball was revealed in a different location. The experimenter then demonstrated a novel action: using her head to activate a light while her hands were free. Infants imitated that novel action more if the experimenter had previously produced a surprising than an expected outcome. In Experiment 2, infants witnessed the experimenter produce the surprising outcome, then use her head to activate the light while her hands were occupied. Infants did not differentially imitate the head-touch action relative to either condition in Experiment 1, perhaps indicating a tension between surprise-induced learning and rational imitation. These experiments show that surprising events are pedagogical opportunities: infants selectively learn from surprising individuals, but also may account for rationality in their surprise-induced social learning.

The underlying channels through which peer influence operates in durable good adoption can affect the ability of marketers to leverage them. In this paper, we assess whether the visibility of peers' adoption decisions leads to greater peer influence. The context we study is residential rooftop solar panels. We exploit the plausibly exogenous location and orientation of peers' rooftop solar panels relative to proximate roadways and visual obstructions, such as vegetation, in order to determine whether geographically proximate peer installations increase a household's probability of solar adoption more if they are visible from the road. Highlighting the role of peer influence at the very local level, we find evidence of peer influence for non-visible solar arrays only within 100m on the same street. We also demonstrate that installations that are visible from the street exert peer influence at distances of at least 500m. A peer installation within 500m that is visible from proximate roadways at angles totaling 90 degrees exerts the same magnitude peer effect as a non-visible installation within 100m. The effect of peer visibility is moderated by the economic value the peers receive from installing solar, providing suggestive evidence of social learning through visual information.

Indigenous communities practice survivance and challenge social and political systems to support their children's identity and well-being. Grounded in transformative social-emotional learning (SEL) and tribal critical race theory, this 3-year community-based participatory research study (2019-2021) examined how a SEL program co-created with an Indigenous community in Flathead Nation in Montana supports anti-racism and anti-colonialism among Indigenous children. Critical reflexivity and thematic analyses of Community Advisory Board meetings and journals written by 60 students (M

Objective We aim to explore how users’ experience of presence in a virtual world (VW) learning environment enhanced patient engagement in DSME/S programs conducted in an online VW platform with minority women with type 2 diabetes. Methods We conducted an embedded, mixed methods study, using a convergent study design to analyze qualitative field notes and interview data and quantitative survey data gathered from the Women in Control 2.0 (WIC2) clinical trial participants. The WIC2 clinical trial compared a diabetes group visit program delivered using an online VW platform versus an in-person approach. Result We enrolled 158 VW participants, of which 144 completed baseline data, 124 completed the post-intervention follow up survey, and 30 participated in key informant and focus group interviews. Overall, participants reported a sense of social (63.7%, mean 3.7/5.0), physical (63.1%, mean 3.6/5.0), and self (49.0%, mean 3.3/5.0) presence while engaged in VW group DSME/S. Three themes emerged from mixed methods analysis including, 1) Participants’ identification with their avatars enhances a sense of self presence in a VW, 2) physical presence enables visualization and imaginative play modalities of social learning, and 3) social presence cultivates meaningful social support and psychological safety. Conclusion Our research empirically supports the premise that participants’ experience of three domains of presence (self, physical and social) in a VW environment enhances participant engagement in DSME/S programs. Practice implications Further research is warranted to study optimal approaches to implementation and dissemination of this novel approach to patient education and engagement.

The standard assumption in social learning environments is that agents learn from others through choice outcomes. We argue that in many settings, agents can also infer information from others’ response times (RT), which can increase efficiency. To investigate this, we conduct a standard information cascade experiment and find that RTs do contain information that is not revealed by choice outcomes alone. When RTs are observable, subjects extract this private information and are more likely to break from incorrect cascades. Our results suggest that in environments where RTs are publicly available, the information structure may be richer than previously thought. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, decision analysis.

Norms prescribe how to make decisions in social situations and play a crucial role in sustaining cooperative relationships and coordinating collective action. However, following norms often requires restricting behavior, demanding to curtail selfishness, or suppressing personal goals. This raises the question why people adhere to norms. We review recent theories and empirical findings that aim at explaining why people follow norms even in private, when violations are difficult to detect and are not sanctioned. We discuss theories of norm internalization, social and self-image concerns, and social learning (i.e. preferences conditional on what others do/believe). Finally, we present two behavioral, incentivized tasks that can be used to elicit norms and measure the individual propensity to follow them.

Social learning theory posits that adolescents learn to adopt social norms by observing the behaviors of others and internalizing the associated outcomes. However, the underlying neural processes by which social learning occurs is less well-understood, despite extensive neurobiological reorganization and a peak in social influence sensitivity during adolescence. Forty-four adolescents (Mage = 12.2 years) completed an fMRI scan while observing their older sibling within four years of age (Mage = 14.3 years) of age complete a risky decision-making task. Group iterative multiple model estimation (GIMME) was used to examine patterns of directional brain region connectivity supporting social learning. We identified group-level neural pathways underlying social observation including the anterior insula to the anterior cingulate cortex and mentalizing regions to social cognition regions. We also found neural states based on adolescent sensitivity to social learning via age, gender, modeling, differentiation, and behavior. Adolescents who were more likely to be influenced elicited neurological up-regulation whereas adolescents who were less likely to be socially influenced elicited neurological down-regulation during risk-taking. These findings highlight patterns of how adolescents process information while a salient influencer takes risks, as well as salient neural pathways that are dependent on similarity factors associated with social learning theory.

This paper argues that the persistence of greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI) comes from information frictions. First, our simple social learning model shows that, through signaling effects, information frictions generate persistent greenfield FDI inflows. Second, we show empirically that the autoregressive coefficient of greenfield FDI increases in value with different proxies for information frictions, including six institutional and governance indicators and two common language measures. We also find that greenfield FDI persistence varies across industries. In particular, greenfield FDI by service firms is more persistent than that by manufacturing firms. Finally, our findings suggest that better governance, predictability, and transparency reduce information frictions and thereby avoiding drastic and persistent ups and downs in FDI.

Urban labs are arenas for fostering urban sustainable transitions, where different actors experiment and learn together how to create inclusive and sustainable cities. A key aspect of these processes is social learning, which is the collaborative learning process through which new understandings and practices emerge from the activities of urban labs. Social learning also includes the process through which these understandings and practices are further anchored and can transform the organizations participating in urban labs. Social learning is seen as key to tackling polarization and creating transformational capacity at different levels. This article explores how social learning can strengthen urban labs’ democratic ambitions. Building on the insights emerging from a collaborative learning process with civil servants within an urban lab, it highlights the need for ensuring plurality and challenging privilege in social learning. It also emphasizes the importance of nurturing a listening capacity within urban labs and municipal organizations.

Learning can occur via trial and error; however, learning from conspecifics is faster and more efficient. Social animals can easily learn from conspecifics, but how do less social species learn? In particular, birds provide astonishing examples of social learning of vocalizations, while vocal learning from conspecifics is much less understood in mammals. We present a hypothesis aimed at solving an apparent paradox: how can harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) learn their song when their whole lives are marked by loose conspecific social contact? Harbor seal pups are raised individually by their mostly silent mothers. Pups' first few weeks of life show developed vocal plasticity; these weeks are followed by relatively silent years until sexually mature individuals start singing. How can this rather solitary life lead to a learned song? Why do pups display vocal plasticity at a few weeks of age, when this is apparently not needed? Our hypothesis addresses these questions and tries to explain how vocal learning fits into the natural history of harbor seals, and potentially other less social mammals. We suggest that harbor seals learn during a sensitive period within puppyhood, where they are exposed to adult males singing. In particular, we hypothesize that, to make this learning possible, the following happens concurrently: (1) mothers give birth right before male singing starts, (2) pups enter a sensitive learning phase around weaning time, which (3) coincides with their foraging expeditions at sea which, (4) in turn, coincide with the peak singing activity of adult males. In other words, harbor seals show vocal learning as pups so they can acquire elements of their future song from adults, and solitary adults can sing because they have acquired these elements as pups. We review the available evidence and suggest that pups learn adult vocalizations because they are born exactly at the right time to eavesdrop on singing adults. We conclude by advancing empirical predictions and testable hypotheses for future work.

Teaching enables humans to impart vast stores of culturally specific knowledge and skills. However, little is known about the neural computations that guide teachers’ decisions about what information to communicate. Participants (N = 28) played the role of teachers while being scanned using fMRI; their task was to select examples that would teach learners how to answer abstract multiple-choice questions. Participants’ examples were best described by a model that selects evidence that maximizes the learner’s belief in the correct answer. Consistent with this idea, participants’ predictions about how well learners would do closely tracked the performance of an independent sample of learners (N = 140) who were tested on the examples they had provided. In addition, regions that play specialized roles in processing social information, namely the bilateral temporoparietal junction and middle and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, tracked learners’ posterior belief in the correct answer. Our results shed light on the computational and neural architectures that support our extraordinary abilities as teachers.

Division of labour, or the differentiation of the individuals in a collective across tasks, is a fundamental aspect of social organisations, such as social insect colonies. It allows for efficient resource use and improves the chances of survival for the entire collective. The emergence of large inactive groups of individuals in insect colonies sometimes referred to as laziness, has been a puzzling and hotly debated division-of-labour phenomenon in recent years that is counter to the intuitive notion of effectiveness. It has previously been shown that inactivity can be explained as a by-product of social learning without the need to invoke an adaptive function. While highlighting an interesting and important possibility, this explanation is limited because it is not yet clear whether the relevant aspects of colony life are governed by social learning. In this paper, we explore the two fundamental types of behavioural adaptation that can lead to a division of labour, individual learning and social learning. We find that inactivity can just as well emerge from individual learning alone. We compare the behavioural dynamics in various environmental settings under the social and individual learning assumptions, respectively. We present individual-based simulations backed up by analytic theory, focusing on adaptive dynamics for the social paradigm and cross-learning for the individual paradigm. We find that individual learning can induce the same behavioural patterns previously observed for social learning. This is important for the study of the collective behaviour of social insects because individual learning is a firmly established paradigm of behaviour learning in their colonies. Beyond the study of inactivity, in particular, the insight that both modes of learning can lead to the same patterns of behaviour opens new pathways to approach the study of emergent patterns of collective behaviour from a more generalised perspective.

Cultures around the world show varying levels of conservatism. While maintaining traditional ideas prevents wrong ones from being embraced, it also slows or prevents adaptation to new times. Without exploration there can be no improvement, but often this effort is wasted as it fails to produce better results, making it better to exploit the best known option. This tension is known as the exploration/exploitation issue, and it occurs at the individual and group levels, whenever decisions are made. As such, it is has been investigated across many disciplines. We extend previous work by approximating a continuum of traits under local exploration, employing the method of adaptive dynamics, and studying multiple fitness functions. In this work, we ask how nature would solve the exploration/exploitation issue, by allowing natural selection to operate on an exploration parameter in a variety of contexts, thinking of exploration as mutation in a trait space with a varying fitness function. Specifically, we study how exploration rates evolve by applying adaptive dynamics to the replicator-mutator equation, under two types of fitness functions. For the first, payoffs are accrued from playing a two-player, two-action symmetric game, we consider representatives of all games in this class, including the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Hawk-Dove, and Stag Hunt games, finding exploration rates often evolve downwards, but can also undergo neutral selection as well depending on the games parameters or initial conditions. Second, we study time dependent fitness with a function having a single oscillating peak. By increasing the period, we see a jump in the optimal exploration rate, which then decreases towards zero as the frequency of environmental change increases. These results establish several possible evolutionary scenarios for exploration rates, providing insight into many applications, including why we can see such diversity in rates of cultural change.

Spatial navigation is a basic function for survival, and the ability to retrace a route has direct relevance for avoiding dangerous places. This study investigates the effects of aversive apprehensions on spatial navigation in a virtual urban environment. Healthy participants with varying degrees of trait anxiety performed a route-repetition and a route-retracing task under threatening and safe context conditions. Results reveal an interaction between the effect of threatening/safe environments and trait anxiety: while threat impairs route-retracing in lower-anxious individuals, this navigational skill is boosted in higher-anxious individuals. According to attentional control theory, this finding can be explained by an attentional shift toward information relevant for intuitive coping strategies (i.e., running away), which should be more pronounced in higher-anxious individuals. On a broader scale, our results demonstrate an often-neglected advantage of trait anxiety, namely that it promotes the processing of environmental information relevant for coping strategies and thus prepares the organism for adequate flight responses.

The study was funded by the National Swiss Foundation grant number: SNF 31003A_166458 and the NCCR Evolving Language, Swiss National Science Foundation Agreement #51NF40_180888. Social learning is beneficial in almost every domain of a social animal's life, but it is particularly important in the context of predation and foraging. In both contexts, social animals tend to produce acoustically distinct vocalizations, alarms, and food calls, which have remained somewhat of an evolutionary conundrum as they appear to be costly for the signaller. Here, we investigated the hypothesis that food calls function to direct others toward novel food items, using a playback experiment on a group of chimpanzees. We showed chimpanzees novel (plausibly edible) items while simultaneously playing either conspecific food calls or acoustically similar greeting calls as a control. We found that individuals responded by staying longer near items previously associated with food calls even in the absence of these vocalizations, and peered more at these items compared with the control items, provided no conspecifics were nearby. We also found that once chimpanzees had access to both item types, they interacted more with the one previously associated with food calls than the control items. However, we found no evidence of social learning per se. Given these effects, we propose that food calls may gate and thus facilitate social learning by directing listeners' attention to new feeding opportunities, which if integrated with additional cues could ultimately lead to new food preferences within social groups. Publisher PDF

Speech and song have been transmitted orally for countless human generations, changing over time under the influence of biological, cognitive, and cultural pressures. Cross-cultural regularities and diversities in human song are thought to emerge from this transmission process, but testing how underlying mechanisms contribute to musical structures remains a key challenge. Here, we introduce an automatic online pipeline that streamlines large-scale cultural transmission experiments using a sophisticated and naturalistic modality: singing. We quantify the evolution of 3,424 melodies orally transmitted across 1,797 participants in the United States and India. This approach produces a high-resolution characterization of how oral transmission shapes melody, revealing the emergence of structures that are consistent with widespread musical features observed cross-culturally (small pitch sets, small pitch intervals, and arch-shaped melodic contours). We show how the emergence of these structures is constrained by individual biases in our participants-vocal constraints, working memory, and cultural exposure-which determine the size, shape, and complexity of evolving melodies. However, their ultimate effect on population-level structures depends on social dynamics taking place during cultural transmission. When participants recursively imitate their own productions (individual transmission), musical structures evolve slowly and heterogeneously, reflecting idiosyncratic musical biases. When participants instead imitate others' productions (social transmission), melodies rapidly shift toward homogeneous structures, reflecting shared structural biases that may underpin cross-cultural variation. These results provide the first quantitative characterization of the rich collection of biases that oral transmission imposes on music evolution, giving us a new understanding of how human song structures emerge via cultural transmission.

The directions of education development change in the conditions of VUCA world. It will allow educational institutions to be competitive and improve the quality of their educational services. One of these fields of educational process management is social and community learning.The current article studies the issue of social and community learning as one of the fields of educational process management and the possibilities of its further use in the educational process of preschool, general secondary, out-of-school and postgraduate education. The most important life skills today are actively studying and learning strategies, as well as the skill of leadership and social influence as one of the skills important for specialist, not just the leader. The content of the definitions of «social learning» and «community-learning» and their features is determined.The possibilities of using in the educational process such types of educational and cognitive activity organization as coworking, networking, foresight, crowdsourcing, benchmarking, event, etc. are indicated in the context of the study. Examples of practical techniques of Singaporean educational structures are given.It is concluded that community learning is an educational process implemented on the basis of partnership pedagogy, and its effectiveness and efficiency are ensured through cooperation between students, parents and teachers through various projects, informal meetings, conversations, study circles, etc. Social learning is implemented using various platforms and online tools., В умовах VUCA-світу змінюються напрями розвитку освіти, врахування яких дозволить закладам освіти бути конкурентоздатними та підвищити якість своїх освітніх послуг. Одним із таких напрямів управління освітнім процесом є соціальне та спільне навчання. Метою статті є дослідження питання соціального та спільного навчання як напряму управління освітнім процесом і можливостей подальшого його використання в освітньому процесі закладів дошкільної, загальної середньої, позашкільної та післядипломної освіти. Відзначено, що найважливішими життєвими навичками нині є активне навчання та навчальні стратегії, а також навичка лідерства і соціального впливу як однієї з навичок, необхідних кожному фахівцю, а не тільки керівникові-лідерові. Визначено зміст дефініцій «соціальне навчання» та «спільне навчання», а також визначено особливості кожного з них. У контексті дослідження вказано на можливості використання в освітньому процесі таких видів організації навчально-пізнавальної діяльності, як коворкінг, нетворкінг, форсайт, краудсорсинг, бенчмаркінг, івент тощо. Наведено приклади практичних технік сінгапурських навчальних структур. Зроблено висновок про те, що спільне навчання – це освітній процес, реалізований на засадах педагогіки партнерства, а його ефективність і дієвість забезпечується через співпрацю між учнями, батьками, педагогами за рахунок різноманітних проєктів, неформальних зустрічей, бесід, навчальних гуртків тощо, а соціальне навчання – освітній процес із використанням різноманітних платформ та онлайн-інструментів.

IntroductionStudent teachers (henceforth: students) in higher education often experience feelings of emotional loneliness that negatively impact upon their well-being and motivation to learn. Consequently, the importance of social learning for students has gained increased prominence, with Teacher Learning Groups (TLGs), that is, social configurations in which students, in-service teachers, and teacher educators, sometimes supplemented by researchers and/or experts, collaboratively learn through social interactions, being introduced in teacher training institutes. Ordinarily, TLGs organized their meetings face-to-face; however, due to COVID-19 measures, they had to rapidly transition to blended meetings, which in turn impacted upon students’ basic psychological needs.MethodsIn the present study, a convergent parallel mixed-methods design was utilized. The variables Social Configurations (Practice integration, Long-term orientation and goals; Shared identity and equal relationships) and Basic Psychological Needs (Competence, Autonomy, Relatedness) were assessed through the use of qualitative interviews and by administering two online quantitative surveys: the “Dimensions of Social Learning Questionnaire” and the “Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale”. Seventy students completed the questionnaires, while 14 students were interviewed. The students were recruited from four teacher training institutes.ResultsThe analyses reveal that the more students perceive Shared identity and equal relationships in blended TLGs, the greater the fulfillment of Basic Psychological Needs they experience. Moreover, the more students experience the fulfillment of the need for Competence, the more students perceive TLGs’ Social Configurations.DiscussionBased on the findings, we conclude that, although in-depth learning is more challenging during distance learning, blended TLGs are valuable for students’ Basic Psychological Needs during unpredictable times.

The extensive use of social networks by people of all ages and the wide range of freely available content therein can be very useful for sustainable education. This research paper aims to explore informal learning on YouTube from a sociocultural approach, observing the reasons why our subjects select this platform for their self-learning and how they evaluate different actions that mediate their learning. This is achieved through two constructs derived from the sociocultural approach: preference and mediation. The differences are also analysed according to the age, sex, and level of education of the subjects. A quantitative methodology is used, applying the statistical techniques of descriptive and inferential analyses. Data are obtained through an ad hoc questionnaire that collects information on the proposed constructs. The sample consists of 504 people from the Andalusia region in Spain. Our results show the criteria that users apply in their preference of YouTube, as well as mediating actions that should be self-regulated during users’ informal learning process on YouTube. Significant statistical differences are obtained for the age variable but not for the gender variable or the level of education, with respect to the two constructs studied. The relevance and significance of the variables studied indicate the value people attribute to YouTube as a tool for informal learning and its potential for sustainable education. This study has implications in sustainable education, as YouTube is a tool that breaks down barriers and can be adjusted to the needs of a population.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the shift to online learning in higher education, making the need to rethink pedagogical approaches to on-campus education stronger than ever before. While online learning offers a wide range of benefits for both teachers and students, social, face-to-face interaction provides a strong rationale for in-person education. This paper proposes a novel approach to enhancing in-person social learning experiences through robot-supported collaborative learning facilitated by a social robot NAO in the case study “Planning poker with NAO”, which is a collaborative game-based activity facilitated by the robot. The case study was designed to provide a scalable social learning experience in small groups of students. The evaluation results from a study with 46 university students who played Planning poker with NAO explore different quality aspects of the learning experience. The results indicate that students valued both the social learning experience and the robotic facilitator. The analysis revealed some significant differences among students with and without prior experience in interacting with NAO, suggesting directions for future research related to novelty and familiarisation effects as well as to scaling up of social learning in small groups by applying social robots.

The use of digital and remote teaching has expanded in higher education and reached a peak during the COVID-19 pandemic. Reducing the social component of the learning process may increase students’ isolation, loneliness, and dropout rates. This study aimed to investigate the experiences of student peer mentors who participated in a mentoring program that was implemented to increase student well-being and prevent dropping out among first-year Bachelor of Nursing students at a university in Norway during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eleven semi-structured interviews were carried out with student peer mentors. Using a thematic analysis, four themes were identified: being someone who can ease the transition, defining roles and boundaries, developing communication strategies, and developing their own professional competence. Knowing how difficult the transition to higher education was and being a student during the COVID-19 pandemic made it challenging for the mentors to set boundaries. It was also challenging to develop effective ways to communicate with the first-year students. Being a mentor was considered beneficial for developing professional skills such as empathy and communication and to gain self-confidence. There is a need for more knowledge about how to support mentors in clarifying the peer mentoring role, setting boundaries, and coping with the emotional labor involved in peer mentoring.

Η αποτελεσματικότητα των Προγραμμάτων Κοινωνικής και Συναισθηματικής Μάθησης αποδεικνύεται μέσα από πολυάριθμες έρευνες σε βάθος χρόνου. Η παρούσα διπλωματική εργασία εστιάζει στην χρησιμότητα αυτών των προγραμμάτων σε παιδιά γυμνασίου. Το γυμνάσιο είναι μια πολύ σημαντική φάση για την ανάπτυξη των παιδιών , καθώς διανύουν την περίοδο της εφηβείας, όπου όλα τα συναισθήματα είναι έντονα και δύσκολα ως προς τη διαχείριση τους. Τα περιστατικά σχολικού εκφοβισμού , που βρίσκονται σε έξαρση τα τελευταία χρόνια, σε συνδυασμό με τις διάφορες κοινωνικοπολιτικές αλλαγές (μετανάστευση,φυ λετικές διακρίσεις κ.α) που επίσης ακολουθούν γρήγορο ρυθμό , φέρνουν στην επιφάνεια πεποιθήσεις και συναισθήματα που είναι δύσκολο να διαχειριστούν. Σκοπός της έρευνας αυτής είναι να διερευνηθεί η αναγκαιότητα ύπαρξης αυτών των προγραμμάτων στα σχολεία αυτής της βαθμίδας. Έτσι στάλθηκαν ερωτηματολόγια στους καθηγητές τεσσάρων γυμνασίων στην πόλη των Τρικάλων. Το δείγμα ήταν 85 καθηγητές εκ των οποίων οι 50 ήταν γυναίκες και οι 35 άντρες. Τα αποτελέσματα του ερωτηματολογίου έδειξαν πως το 70% θεωρεί απαραίτητη την ύπαρξη τέτοιων προγραμμάτων στα σχολεία ενώ το 52% του δείγματος πιστεύει πως η συναισθηματική διαχείριση και ισορροπία συμβάλλει και στις μαθησιακές επιδόσεις .Γενικά, δεν υπήρχε κάποια αξιοσημείωτη διαφορά ανάμεσα στα φύλα του δείγματος (άντρας-γυναίκα) , ως προς τις απόψεις τους για αυτά τα προγράμματα. Τέλος , προτείνεται κι ένα τέτοιο πρόγραμμα τρίμηνης διάρκειας σε επίπεδο πρόληψης. *Για το λόγο ότι αυτή η εργασία προετοιμάστηκε την περίοδο του κορωνοιού , η πρόσβαση στα σχολεία δεν ήταν εφικτή. Επομένως , δεν πραγματοποιήθηκε το πρόγραμμα, παρουσιάζεται απλά ως πρόταση. 81 σ.

We consider the problem of information aggregation in federated decision making, where a group of agents collaborate to infer the underlying state of nature without sharing their private data with the central processor or each other. We analyze the non-Bayesian social learning strategy in which agents incorporate their individual observations into their opinions (i.e., soft-decisions) with Bayes rule, and the central processor aggregates these opinions by arithmetic or geometric averaging. Building on our previous work, we establish that both pooling strategies result in asymptotic normality characterization of the system, which, for instance, can be utilized to derive approximate expressions for the error probability. We verify the theoretical findings with simulations and compare both strategies., Accepted to IEEE Statistical Signal Processing (SSP) Workshop 2023