Modul I: Decision-making
Dynamic social decision-making in virtual groups
Marcel Brass, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Human decision-making is often embedded in a social context. Although conformity research has long established the power of social influence, the study of social decision-making within dynamic, interactive groups remains a significant experimental challenge. To address this challenge, we introduce a virtual group approach. This highly controlled experimental framework enables the manipulation of key social variables, such as group size and density, while also permitting the isolation of cognitive factors, such as motor contagion, to determine their specific impact on individual decision-making.
Decision making in natural environments
Ralf Kurvers, MPI for Human Development
Understanding decision making in the real world is arguably one of the key goals of psychology. Traditionally, however, decision making has been mostly studied in highly-constrained lab settings. This has provided a rich insight in the cognitive processes underlying decision making in constrained environments, but leaves open the question of generalizability. In this talk, I will present recent work on studying human social foraging in a natural setting. Combining high-precision GPS tracking and video footage from large-scale foraging competitions with cognitive-computational modeling and agent-based simulations, we aim to uncover the decision-making mechanisms underlying human social foraging in the real world across different environments. This approach demonstrates the importance of sociality for human foraging decisions, and provides a template for harnessing high-resolution tracking data to study decision making in the real world.
Modul II: Artificial Agents
Mind the machines: Artficial agents with social skills?
Eva Wiese, Technische Universität Berlin
Embodied artificial agents as future cohabitants become more and more a reality. There are two challenges: (1) how can such agents best adapt to individuals’ cognitive abilities, and (2) when do individuals perceive them as social beings who understand human needs, emotions and intentions. This talk will discuss current research on the engagement of social cognition by artificial agents. The focus will be on experiments exploring (1) causes and effects of mind attribution to artificial agents, as well as (2) downsides of imbuing artificial agents with social features.
How artificial agents change us
Iyad Rahwan, MPI for Human Development
Artificial agents powered by AI are rapidly proliferating in our social world. This talk will explore some ongoing research on how these artificial agents may shape human behavior. It will focus on two specific projects, examining (1) how delegation to artificial agents alters human morality; (2) how conversing with language models changes human spoken communication.
Modul III: Lifespan Development
Building blocks of memory in early childhood
Zoe Ngo, MPI for Human Development
The abilities to generalize to new situations and to retain specific memories are foundational for learning and well-being. Generalization extracts regularities across related experiences, guiding the accumulation and application of knowledge. In contrast, memory specificity depends on processes that reconstruct particular episodes and protect against confusion among similar events. My research leverages contemporary neurocomputational models to chart the development of these component memory processes from early to middle childhood. I will highlight the reciprocal relationship between empirical data on memory development and models of mature memory systems; that is, how developmental findings constrain the construction of viable models, and how contemporary models, in turn, inform our understanding of memory development.
Lifespan development and well-being: Reflections and future directions
David Richter, SHARE Berlin
I first encountered the LIFE program as a student, following from the sidelines how it expanded our understanding of human development. Later, as a faculty member, I experienced its continued growth: from the early focus on cognitive aging and lifespan development to the integration of neuroscience, and more recently, genetics and epigenetics, which I was glad to support. My own work has centered on the development of well-being across the life course in the broadest sense. Looking ahead, I see major potential in combining these foundations with the new node on artificial agents. Linking developmental science, neuroscience, genetics, and artificial agents may allow us to address fundamental questions of how people adapt, learn, and flourish across the lifespan.
Modul IV: Environments/Contexts
The couple context of health behavior change: Classifying dyadic techniques
Nina Knoll, Freie Universität Berlin
Health behavior change often occurs within the immediate social context, for example, within couples. Many interventions therefore target dyadic behavior change processes, that is, processes involving two persons. Yet until recently no shared framework or terminology existed to classify such dyadic behavior change techniques (DBCTs). To address this gap, we developed a Compendium of DBCTs, reviewed by international experts. This Compendium systematically describes “who does what for whom” in dyadic interventions, offering a clear nomenclature to specify intervention content, report DBCTs, and synthesize evidence across studies. Each DBCT is linked to theory and its most proximal mechanism of action, offering guidance for designing theory-based dyadic interventions in health behavior change.
On how the physical living environment impacts the human brain and well-being
Simone Kühn, MPI for Human Development
The talk will span observational as well as experimental work trying to link the physical environment to brain structural and functional – as well as affective and cognitive – markers that signal human brain health and well-being.
The goal of this research is to gain a better understanding of which living environments foster salutogenesis in humans.
