Lisa O’Bryan, Rice University

In order to obtain social benefits, individuals must remain cohesive, coordinate their behavior, and collectively process information. The field of collective behavior focuses on understanding how group-wide properties such as these emerge from the interactions of many individuals. Most studies of collective behavior examine how coordination is achieved through visual cues about others’ positions and behavior. However, in many complex social and ecological environments, communication can be critical for achieving successful outcomes since many signals have evolved to advertise location, express motivational state and share information. My research focuses on how vocal communication both influences, and is influenced by, individual and group-wide properties, with the aim of better understanding the behavioral mechanisms underlying the successful (and unsuccessful) functioning of social groups. I study this topic using technology to obtain detailed, continuous measurements of individual behaviors and interactions in both non-human and human social groups. In this talk I will review my work using wearable dataloggers to study how vocalizations influence the collective movements of domesticated herds and wild baboons. I will also discuss current studies focused on the role conversational turn-taking plays in the decision-making and collective intelligence of human teams. The long-term goal of my research program is to gain new insights into the function and evolution of communication systems involved in the mediation of collective behaviors and how we can engineer communication systems within our own societies to produce more favorable group-wide outcomes.