Self-Regulation through Communication in Evolved Neural Agents
Demonstrates that communication can evolve for self-regulation rather than just information transfer, challenging the standard view of communication as signaling.
In a minimal predator avoidance task with evolved CTRNN agents, three communication strategies emerged, with 20% of agents using self-hearing-dependent calls for self-regulation. Removing self-hearing impaired self-regulatory callers (fitness 0.40) while safety callers remained functional (0.90), showing communication can evolve for behavioral regulation.
Communication is typically understood as indication: signals that transfer information from sender to receiver. We present a minimal predator avoidance task in which pairs of evolved CTRNN agents use communication for robust survival, and in which agents hear their own vocalizations, as in natural systems. Across 112 perfect-fitness agents from over 2,000 evolutionary runs, three dominant strategies emerge (accounting for 81% of agents): safety calling (39%), where agents signal from safe cover; alarm indication (22%), where agents vocalize when a threat is present without relying on self-hearing; and self-regulatory calling (20%), where agents depend on hearing their own call to sustain escape behavior. Self-hearing dependency is common among agents that call during an active threat (47%), but rare among agents that call only after reaching safe cover (10%; p < 10^-4). This pattern is consistent with a difference in causal order: safety callers act then communicate, while self-regulatory callers communicate in order to act. Removing self-hearing selectively impairs self-regulatory callers (fitness 0.40) while safety callers remain functional (0.90; p < 10^-9). These results show that communication can evolve to serve the caller's own behavioral regulation, not just information transfer to others.