Tue 25th February, 11.00-12.30, Room G.04, David Hume Tower (DHT Conference Room)

Matt Spike

Lost in Transmission? The information dynamics of signalling games.

The ability to bootstrap learned communication systems without any apparent organisation has been shown in numerous experiments (eg. Fay et al. 2013) and models (eg. Steels 1999), and by the modern emergence of sign languages such as NSL. Various mechanisms have been suggested as driving this process, but most involve some treatment of reference and information. Shannon’s information theory (1948), with its concise measures of information and entropy, would seem to offer an ideal investigative framework: however, Shannon information famously ignores meaning. I propose a scenario which avoids this problem, in which an optimal system implies the preservation of reference. Following from this, a single measure of conditional entropy can be used to describe the overall dynamics of any signalling game, and can also diagnose whether any given system will converge on optimality. I will discuss the necessary ‘communicative bias’ in terms of several models of learning, feedback and contextual ambiguity, and (if there’s time) ask what some possible experimental applications might be.

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