Agent, Behaviour, Trace, Repeat: Understanding the Cognitive Processes Involved in Human Stigmergic Coordination

Stigmergy refers to the coordination of agents via artifacts of behaviours (behavioural traces) in the shared environment. Whilst primarily studied in biology and computer science/robotics, stigmergy underlies many human indirect interactions, both offline (e.g., trail building) and online (e.g., development of open-source software). In this review, we provide an introduction to stigmergy and emphasise how and where human stigmergy is distinct from animal or robot stigmergy, such as intentional communication via traces and causal inferences from the traces to the causing behaviour. Cognitive processes discussed on the agent level include attention, motivation, meaning and meta-cognition, as well as emergence/immergence, iterative learning and exploration/exploitation at the interface of individual agent and multi-agent systems. Characteristics of one-agent, two-agent and multi-agent systems are discussed and areas for future research highlighted.