High-precision tracking of human foragers reveals adaptive social information use in the wild

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Schakowski, Alexander; Deffner, Dominik; Kortet, Raine; Niemela, Petri T.; Kavelaars, Marwa M.; Monk, Christopher T.; Pykala, Maria; Kurvers, Ralf H. J. M.
• 署名单位: Max Planck Society; Humboldt University of Berlin; Philipps University Marburg; Technical University of Berlin; University of Eastern Finland; University of Helsinki; Humboldt University of Berlin; Helmholtz Association; GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel; Leibniz Association; Leibniz Institut fur Gewasserokologie und Binnenfischerei (IGB); University of Lausanne
• 刊物名称: SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.ady1055
• 发表日期: 2026-01-29
• 页码: eady1055
• 关键词: MARGINAL VALUE; BERRY PICKING; exploration; KNOWLEDGE; EVOLUTION; cognition; BEHAVIOR; rules

摘要

Foraging complexity and competitive social challenges are considered key drivers of human cognition. Yet, the decision-making mechanisms that underlie social foraging in the real world remain unknown. Integrating high-precision Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking and video footage from large-scale foraging competitions with cognitive-computational modeling and agent-based simulations, we show how foragers integrate personal, social, and ecological information to guide spatial search and patch-leaving decisions. We show how the social context emerges as a key driver of foraging dynamics. Foragers adaptively rely on social information to locate resources when unsuccessful and extend giving-up times in the presence of others, which results in increased area-restricted search at high social densities. These findings demonstrate the importance of sociality for human foraging decisions and provide a template for harnessing high-resolution tracking data to study real-world cognition.