An investigation of the evolutionary origin of reciprocal communication using simulated autonomous agents

Abstract

How does communication originates in a population of originally non-communicating individuals? Providing an answer to this question from a neo-Darwinian epistemological perspective is not a trivial task. The reason is that, for non-communicating agents, the capabilities of emitting signals and responding to them are both adaptively neutral traits if they are not simultaneously present. Research studies based on rather general and theoretically oriented evolutionary simulation models have, so far, demonstrated that at least two different processes can account for the origin of communication. On the one hand, communicative behaviour may first evolve in a non-communicative context and only subsequently acquire its adaptive function. On the other hand, communication may originate thanks to cognitive constraints; that is, communication may originate thanks to the existence of neural substrates that are common to the signalling and categorising capabilities. This article provides a proof-of-concept demonstration of the origin of communication in a novel-simulated scenario in which groups of two homogeneous (i.e. genetically identical) agents exploit reciprocal communication to develop common perceptual categories and to perform a collective task. In particular, in circumstances in which communication is evolutionarily advantageous, simulated agents evolve from scratch social behaviour through acoustic interactions. We look into the phylogeny of successful communication protocol, and we describe the evolutionary phenomena that, in early evolutionary stages, paved the way for the subsequent development of reciprocal communication, categorisation capabilities and successful cooperative strategies.