Higher-order theory of mind in the Tacit Communication Game

Weerd, Harmen de; Verbrugge, Rineke; Verheij, Bart

doi:10.1016/j.bica.2014.11.010

Cited by 21 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…In this setting, participants do not only reason about the way unfamiliar partners will interpret a novel signal, but also adjust their behavior depending on whether they believe to be partnered with a child or with an adult [4]. Additionally, simulation experiments with artificial agents have shown that the use of higher-order theory of mind can partially explain the high human performance in the Tacit Communication Game [12]. These results seem to suggest that par-ticipants more readily make use of higher-order theory of mind in cooperative settings.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating the Use of Higher-Order Theory of Mind Using Computational Agents

Weerd

Diepgrond

Verbrugge

2018

The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics

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When people make decisions in a social context, they often make use of theory of mind, by reasoning about unobservable mental content of others. For example, the behavior of a pedestrian who wants to cross the street depends on whether or not he believes that the driver of an oncoming car has seen him or not. People can also reason about the theory of mind abilities of others, leading to recursive thinking of the sort ‘I think that you think that I think…’. Previous research suggests that this ability may be especially effective in simple competitive settings. In this paper, we use a combination of computational agents and Bayesian model selection to determine to what extent people make use of higher-order theory of mind reasoning in a particular competitive game known as matching pennies. We find that while many children and adults appear to make use of theory of mind, participants are also often classified as using a simpler reactive strategy based only on the actions of the directly preceding round. This may indicate that human reasoners do not primarily use their theory of mind abilities to compete with others.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating the Use of Higher-Order Theory of Mind Using Computational Agents

Weerd

Diepgrond

Verbrugge

2018

The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics

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“…The Vygotskian intelligence hypothesis would explain both the human capacity for theory of mind and the capacity to engage in altruistic cooperative action [6,29,65]. Our results from agent-based simulations in a communication game show that higher-order theory of mind can indeed help to reach a cooperative solution more quickly [14]. However, computational models have shown that many forms of cooperation can also emerge through simple mechanisms, without need for a cognitively demanding ability such as theory of mind [12,51,66].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 49%

Negotiating with other minds: the role of recursive theory of mind in negotiation with incomplete information

Weerd

Verbrugge

Verheij

2015

Auton Agent Multi-Agent Syst

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Theory of mind refers to the ability to reason explicitly about unobservable mental content of others, such as beliefs, goals, and intentions. People often use this ability to understand the behavior of others as well as to predict future behavior. People even take this ability a step further, and use higher-order theory of mind by reasoning about the way others make use of theory of mind and in turn attribute mental states to different agents. One of the possible explanations for the emergence of the cognitively demanding ability of higher-order theory of mind suggests that it is needed to deal with mixed-motive situations. Such mixed-motive situations involve partially overlapping goals, so that both cooperation and competition play a role. In this paper, we consider a particular mixed-motive situation known as Colored Trails, in which computational agents negotiate using alternating offers with incomplete information about the preferences of their trading partner. In this setting, we determine to what extent higher-order theory of mind is beneficial to computational agents. Our results show limited effectiveness of first-order theory of mind, while second-order theory of mind turns out to benefit agents greatly by allowing them to reason about the way they can communicate their interests. Additionally, we let human participants negotiate with computational agents of different orders of theory of mind. These experiments show that people spontaneously make use of second-order theory of mind in negotiations when their trading partner is capable of second-order theory of mind as well.

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“…Secondly, one could imagine a model that includes different kinds of mental states that can be modelled, for instance by distinguishing between percepts, desires and beliefs, or between different orders of recursive mindreading (see Baker et al, 2017;de Weerd et al, 2015;Jara-Ettinger, 2019, for existing models of mindreading that could potentially inspire such work). Such a model might result in a developmental staging of when these different aspects of mindreading are acquired.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A computational model of the cultural co-evolution of language and mindreading

Woensdregt¹,

Cummins²,

Smith³

2019

Preprint

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Several evolutionary accounts of human social cognition posit that language has co-evolved with the sophisticated mindreading abilities of modern humans. It has also been argued that these mindreading abilities are the product of cultural, rather than biological, evolution. Taken together, these claims suggest that the evolution of language has played an important role in the cultural evolution of human social cognition. Here we present a new computational model which formalises the assumptions that underlie this hypothesis, in order to explore how language and mindreading interact through cultural evolution. This model treats communicative behaviour as an interplay between the context in which communication occurs, an agent’s individual perspective on the world, and the agent’s lexicon. However, each agent’s perspective and lexicon are private mental representations, not directly observable to other agents. Learners are therefore confronted with the task of jointly inferring the lexicon and perspective of their cultural parent, based on their utterances in context. Simulation results show that given these assumptions, an informative lexicon evolves not just under a pressure to be successful at communicating, but also under a pressure for accurate perspective inference. When such a lexicon evolves, agents become better at inferring others’ perspectives; not because their innate ability to learn about perspectives changes, but because sharing a language (of the right type) with others helps them to do so.

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Higher-order theory of mind in the Tacit Communication Game

Cited by 21 publications

References 35 publications

Estimating the Use of Higher-Order Theory of Mind Using Computational Agents

Estimating the Use of Higher-Order Theory of Mind Using Computational Agents

Negotiating with other minds: the role of recursive theory of mind in negotiation with incomplete information

A computational model of the cultural co-evolution of language and mindreading

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