Skip to main content

Modeling a Social Brain for Interactive Agents: Integrating Mirroring and Mentalizing

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 9238))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

Human interaction has a distinct collaborative quality based on the attribution of communicative intentionality. Two networks in the human brain are often described as part of the “social brain”: the mirror system for recognizing intentional behavior and the mentalizing (theory of mind) system for processing it. We equip virtual agents with both systems and model their interaction during embodied communication. Results of simulation experiments demonstrate how higher orders of theory of mind lead to more robustness of communication by enabling interactive grounding processes.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Ciaramidaro, A., Becchio, C., Colle, L., Bara, B.G., Walter, H.: Do you mean me? communicative intentions recruit the mirror and the mentalizing system. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 9(7), 909–916 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Clark, A.: Whatever next? predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science. Behav. Brain Sci. 36(03), 181–204 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Clark, H.H., Brennan, S.E.: Grounding in communication. In: Perspectives on socially shared cognition, vol. 13, pp. 127–149. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, US (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Dennett, D.C.: The Intentional Stance. The MIT Press, Cambridge (1987)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Frith, U., Frith, C.: The social brain: allowing humans to boldly go where no other species has been. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 365(1537), 165–176 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Gangopadhyay, N., Schilbach, L.: Seeing minds: a neurophilosophical investigation of the role of perception-action coupling in social perception. Soc. Neurosci. 7(4), 410–423 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Lhommet, M., Marsella, S.C.: Gesture with meaning. In: Aylett, R., Krenn, B., Pelachaud, C., Shimodaira, H. (eds.) IVA 2013. LNCS, vol. 8108, pp. 303–312. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Myllyneva, A., Hietanen, J.K.: There is more to eye contact than meets the eye. Cognition 134, 100–109 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Pickering, M.J., Garrod, S.: An integrated theory of language production and comprehension. Behav. Brain Sci. 36(4), 329–347 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Ribeiro, T., Vala, M., Paiva, A.: Thalamus: closing the mind-body loop in interactive embodied characters. In: Nakano, Y., Neff, M., Paiva, A., Walker, M. (eds.) IVA 2012. LNCS, vol. 7502, pp. 189–195. Springer, Heidelberg (2012)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Ribeiro, T., Vala, M., Paiva, A.: Censys: a model for distributed embodied cognition. In: Aylett, R., Krenn, B., Pelachaud, C., Shimodaira, H. (eds.) IVA 2013. LNCS, vol. 8108, pp. 58–67. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  12. Sadeghipour, A., Kopp, S.: Embodied gesture processing: motor-based integration of perception and action in social artificial agents. Cogn. Comput. 3(3), 419–435 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Schilbach, L., Timmermans, B., Reddy, V., Costall, A., Bente, G., Schlicht, T., Vogeley, K.: Toward a second-person neuroscience. Behav. Brain Sci. 36(4), 393–414 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Teufel, C., Fletcher, P.C., Davis, G.: Seeing other minds: attributed mental states influence perception. Trends Cogn. Sci. 14(8), 376–382 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Thiebaux, M., Marsella, S., Marshall, A.N., Kallmann, M.: SmartBody: behavior realization for embodied conversational agents. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, vol. 1, pp. 151–158 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Tomasello, M.: Origins of Human Communication. The MIT Press, Cambridge (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Van Overwalle, F.: Social cognition and the brain: a meta-analysis. Hum. Brain Mapp. 30(3), 829–858 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Wolpert, D.M., Doya, K., Kawato, M.: A unifying computational framework for motor control and social interaction. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. of Lond. B Biol. Sci. 358(1431), 593–602 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Wykowska, A., Wiese, E., Prosser, A., Müller, H.J.: Beliefs about the minds of others influence how we process sensory information. PLoS ONE 9(4), e94339 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research/work was supported by the Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology ‘CITEC’ (EXC 277) at Bielefeld University, which is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sebastian Kahl .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Kahl, S., Kopp, S. (2015). Modeling a Social Brain for Interactive Agents: Integrating Mirroring and Mentalizing. In: Brinkman, WP., Broekens, J., Heylen, D. (eds) Intelligent Virtual Agents. IVA 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9238. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21996-7_8

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21996-7_8

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-21995-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-21996-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics