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arXiv · 2002.01632

Investigation of the Sense of Agency in Social Cognition, based on frameworks of Predictive Coding and Active Inference: A simulation study on multimodal imitative interaction

Wataru Ohata·Jun Tani
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Abstract

When agents interact socially with different intentions, conflicts are difficult to avoid. Although how agents can resolve such problems autonomously has not been determined, dynamic characteristics of agency may shed light on underlying mechanisms. The current study focused on the sense of agency (SoA), a specific aspect of agency referring to congruence between the agent's intention in acting and the outcome. Employing predictive coding and active inference as theoretical frameworks of perception and action generation, we hypothesize that regulation of complexity in the evidence lower bound of an agent's model should affect the strength of the agent's SoA and should have a critical impact on social interactions. We built a computational model of imitative interaction between a robot and a human via visuo-proprioceptive sensation with a variational Bayes recurrent neural network, and simulated the model in the form of pseudo-imitative interaction using recorded human body movement data. A key feature of the model is that each modality's complexity can be regulated differently with a hyperparameter assigned to each module. We first searched for an optimal setting that endows the model with appropriate coordination of multimodal sensation. This revealed that the vision module's complexity should be more tightly regulated than that of the proprioception module. Using the optimally trained model, we examined how changing the tightness of complexity regulation after training affects the strength of the SoA during interactions. The results showed that with looser regulation, an agent tends to act more egocentrically, without adapting to the other. In contrast, with tighter regulation, the agent tends to follow the other by adjusting its intention. We conclude that the tightness of complexity regulation crucially affects the strength of the SoA and the dynamics of interactions between agents.

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Wataru Ohata, Jun Tani. 2020-02-05. Investigation of the Sense of Agency in Social Cognition, based on frameworks of Predictive Coding and Active Inference: A simulation study on multimodal imitative interaction. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2020.00061

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