Self-selection of Input Stimuli for Improving Performance

A system which behaves in an environment can increase its performance level in two different ways. It can improve its ability to react efficiently to any stimulus that may come from the environment or it can acquire an ability to expose itself only to a sub-class of stimuli to which it knows how to respond efficiently. The possibility that a system can solve a task by selecting favourable stimuli is rarely considered in designing intelligent systems. In this paper we show that this type of ability can play a very powerful role in explaining a system's performance. Introduction Cognitive science and robotics have been dominated for years by a static conception of intelligence. More recently there has been a growing awareness of how important active motor behavior, for example in object manipulation, is for understanding natural intelligence and for developing really useful artificial intelligence. In this paper we analyze the capacity of a system to self-select with its behavior its o..