Clowes, Robert

Albanian

Cognitive Sciences ePrint Archive

Action Oriented Adaptive Language Games
Robert Clowes
COGS: School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Sussex
robertc@cogs.susx.ac.uk
1. Extended Abstract
In a recent article (Lindblom and Ziemke, 2002) the
authors argue much of the work in epigenetic robotics
and related elds has either direct or indirect inspi-
ration from the work of the Psychologist and theo-
retician L. S. Vygotsky. And yet despite much in-
terest in what a Vygotsky inspired robotics might
look like, and theoretical schemes where Vygotskian
ideas play a central role - e.g. (Zlatev, 1999) - there
has been little in the way of implemented systems
(either robotic or simulated) that demonstrate the
practicality of this endeavour.
At least one implemented system: Vygovorotsky
(Kulakov and Stojanov, 2002), does aim to build a
developmental architecture along the lines of some
of Vygotsky's ideas. But, although this architecture
might plausibly be a basis for a future Vygotskian
robotics, the authors candidly admit that until a lan-
guage component is incorporated in the architecture
- which is no trivial matter - Vygovorotsky's name
is rather a promissory note suggesting the way for
future work.
One reason for this diculty is that Vygotsky's
principal interest was in the development of higher
psychological functions and these entailed both the
use of signs and the internalisation of speech. For
Vygotsky "the most signicant moment in the course
of intellectual development, which gives birth to the
purely human forms of practical and abstract intel-
ligence, occurs when speech and practical activity,
two previously completely independent lines of de-
velopment converge." (Vygotsky, 1978). To judge
by current research both in humanoid robotic and
simulated agent research, it might be considered be-
yond the current state of the art to incorporate such
concerns. However, the framing of recent work such
as the above around Vygotsky's ideas suggests that
many believe this type of research to be both neces-
sary and plausible. The question is how to pursue
it?
Work in the related elds of the evolution
of language using multi-agent systems - some of
which is collected in (Cangelosi and Parisi, 2002)
- has shown the viability of new techniques
for studying many aspects of language and lan-
guage development based on symbol grounding
(Cangelosi et al., 2000), and the iterated learning
model (Kirby and Hurford, 2002) . In most of this
work, however, the job of learning a language is ab-
stracted away from any other type of psychological
process or situated activity. For Vygotsky the de-
velopment of language could only be properly un-
derstood through the development of joint social
and practical activity. This raises the question of
whether it might be possible, with models similar to
those currently being used to understand the evolu-
tion of language, to instead model language develop-
ment and its relationship to the development of other
higher cognitive processes. To put this in more Vy-
gotskian terms, can we use some of these techniques
to model the involvement of language-like systems in
the development of higher practical activity?
1
This poster illustrates a model which extends con-
temporary approaches to simulating language learn-
ing dynamics. It details a multi-agent system fea-
turing symbol grounding which takes elements from
(Cangelosi et al., 2000) particularly in regard to the
agent's internal architecture. The world in which the
agents are situated resembles in conception the talk-
ing heads scenario of (Steels, 1999) except our agents
not only talk about the objects in the world but act
upon them. We also propose extensions to the theo-
retical model of the Adaptive Language Game (here-
after ALG) framework (Steels, 2000) which aims to
show how this model can be extended for modelling
the shifting interrelationship between cognition and
communication in a neo-Vygotskian manner.
Building upon the ALG framework we elaborate
the design for a new multi-agent system which ex-
amines specically how communicative agents might
autonomously develop grounded, compositional com-
munication systems ('languages') to mediate, extend
and lter their collective behavioural repertoire. We
make three novel additions to the existing frame-
1
One groundbreaking study with a single robotic agent
(Sugita and Tani, 2002) does begin to address how an agent
may be entrained to map action-states onto linguistic com-
mands in a context a context dependent manner. This model
shares many features with our own approach.
work. Firstly, our Agents are designed to take an
active stance toward the world. They can operate on
the world both directly with an eector ('hand') with
which they can move objects around; and indirectly
by inuencing the behaviour of other agents who can
also act upon the world in a similar way. These
language games therefore hinge around changing the
world, not just each other's internal structure. Sec-
ondly our agents have a map of the world that serves
as a plan for action. They are reinforced insofar as
they are able to make the world conform to this map
either directly or instrumentally using a conspecic's
behaviour via the language game. Thirdly we use
a tness function that explicitly rewards social be-
haviour.
The new agent architecture can be argued to follow
an epigenetic trajectory in the sense developed by
Sinha (Sinha, 2001), i.e. the environmental factors,
both the world, and the activity of other agents - the
social world - are constructive of the organisation of
each agent's activity. Unlike the models developed
by Steels and his collaborators we use an architecture
based on a coupled planning system, and neural net-
work based communication system. Crucial to the
model is that both the communication system and
the agents' activity develop as they attempt to make
the world conform to a pre-existing plan which is
projected from each game scenario. Language games
develop not just in terms of naming the features of
objects, but in order to facilitate particular action
plans. The modelled language games are therefore
action oriented in a way not previously explored with
this type of approach.
Vygotsky argued that "the child's system of activ-
ity is determined at each specic stage both by the
child's degree of of organic development and by his
mastery of tools." One of the principal tools he has
in mind here was the sign. We argue that this aug-
mented form of the Adaptive Language Game allows
us a route to the understanding of how signs might
mediate activity. Specically, to explore the transi-
tion between an innate (the pre-given world model)
and constructed representational architecture (the
action-oriented communication system). Or, to put
it in more contemporary terms, the trading of rep-
resentational spaces between language and cognition
(Clark and Thornton, 1997).
References
Cangelosi, A., Greco, A., and Harnad, S. (2000).
From robotic toil to symbolic theft: Ground-
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Cangelosi, A. and Parisi, D. (2002). Simulating The
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