Lise Pijl - Modelling the evolution of theory of mind

afstudeercolloquium

Theory of mind allows us to attribute mental states to others and to understand that the mental states of others may be different from our own. This allows us to predict and understand actions of others. There are different theories explaining why higher-order theory of mind evolved. To contribute to the research on theory of mind we constructed a model that allows us to experiment with the evolution of theory of mind. Heterogeneous agents interact competitively in a non-spatial environment. The agents select their behavior using evolved rules. The rules are evolved with a high degree of freedom, while the rule selection mechanism is fixed. The rules reflect the agent's capability of theory of mind and provide a good tool for studying the evolved behaviour. We found that higher-order theory of mind can evolve in a competitive environment using this set-up. The colloquium will be given in Dutch.