A variational approach to scripts

This paper proposes a formal reconstruction of the script construct by leveraging the active inference framework, a behavioral modeling framework that casts action, perception, emotions, and attention as processes of (Bayesian or variational) inference. We propose a first principles account of the script construct that integrates its different uses in the behavioral and social sciences. We begin by reviewing the recent literature that uses the script construct. We then examine the main mathematical and computational features of active inference. Finally, we leverage the resources of active inference to offer a formal model of scripts. Our integrative model accounts for the dual nature of scripts (as internal, psychological schema used by agents to make sense of event types and as constitutive behavioral categories that make up the social order) and also for the stronger and weaker conceptions of the construct (which do and do not relate to explicit action sequences, respectively)

Epistemic Communities under Active Inference

The spread of ideas is a fundamental concern of today's news ecology. Understanding the dynamics of the spread of information and its co-option by interested parties is of critical importance. Research on this topic has shown that individuals tend to cluster in echo-chambers and are driven by confirmation bias. In this paper, we leverage the active inference framework to provide an in silico model of confirmation bias and its effect on echo-chamber formation. We build a model based on active inference, where agents tend to sample information in order to justify their own view of reality, which eventually leads to them to have a high degree of certainty about their own beliefs. We show that, once agents have reached a certain level of certainty about their beliefs, it becomes very difficult to get them to change their views. This system of self-confirming beliefs is upheld and reinforced by the evolving relationship between an agent's beliefs and observations, which over time will continue to provide evidence for their ingrained ideas about the world. The epistemic communities that are consolidated by these shared beliefs, in turn, tend to produce perceptions of reality that reinforce those shared beliefs. We provide an active inference account of this community formation mechanism. We postulate that agents are driven by the epistemic value that they obtain from sampling or observing the behaviours of other agents. Inspired by digital social networks like Twitter, we build a generative model in which agents generate observable social claims or posts (e.g., 'tweets') while reading the socially observable claims of other agents that lend support to one of two mutually exclusive abstract topics. Agents can choose which other agent they pay attention to at each timestep, and crucially who they attend to and what they choose to read influences their beliefs about the world. Agents also assess their local network's perspective, influencing which kinds of posts they expect to see other agents making. The model was built and simulated using the freely available Python package pymdp. The proposed active inference model can reproduce the formation of echo-chambers over social networks, and gives us insight into the cognitive processes that lead to this phenomenon.publishe

Memory and Markov Blankets

In theoretical biology, we are often interested in random dynamical systems—like the brain—that appear to model their environments. This can be formalized by appealing to the existence of a (possibly non-equilibrium) steady state, whose density preserves a conditional independence between a biological entity and its surroundings. From this perspective, the conditioning set, or Markov blanket, induces a form of vicarious synchrony between creature and world—as if one were modelling the other. However, this results in an apparent paradox. If all conditional dependencies between a system and its surroundings depend upon the blanket, how do we account for the mnemonic capacity of living systems? It might appear that any shared dependence upon past blanket states violates the independence condition, as the variables on either side of the blanket now share information not available from the current blanket state. This paper aims to resolve this paradox, and to demonstrate that conditional independence does not preclude memory. Our argument rests upon drawing a distinction between the dependencies implied by a steady state density, and the density dynamics of the system conditioned upon its configuration at a previous time. The interesting question then becomes: What determines the length of time required for a stochastic system to ‘forget’ its initial conditions? We explore this question for an example system, whose steady state density possesses a Markov blanket, through simple numerical analyses. We conclude with a discussion of the relevance for memory in cognitive systems like us.publishe

Cultural affordances: Scaffolding local worlds through shared intentionality and regimes of attention

In this paper we outline a framework for the study of the mechanisms involved in the engagement of human agents with cultural affordances. Our aim is to better understand how culture and context interact with human biology to shape human behavior, cognition, and experience. We attempt to integrate several related approaches in the study of the embodied, cognitive, and affective substrates of sociality and culture and the sociocultural scaffolding of experience. The integrative framework we propose bridges cognitive and social sciences to provide (i) an expanded concept of ‘affordance’ that extends to sociocultural forms of life, and (ii) a multilevel account of the socioculturally scaffolded forms of affordance learning and the transmission of affordances in patterned sociocultural practices and regimes of shared attention. This framework provides an account of how cultural content and normative practices are built on a foundation of contentless basic mental processes that acquire content through immersive participation of the agent in social practices that regulate joint attention and shared intentionality