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Establishing conventional communication systems: Is common knowledge necessary?
Author(s) -
Barr Dale J.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.498
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1551-6709
pISSN - 0364-0213
DOI - 10.1207/s15516709cog2806_3
Subject(s) - computer science , set (abstract data type) , common knowledge (logic) , contrast (vision) , parallelism (grammar) , product (mathematics) , population , symbolic communication , convergence (economics) , human–computer interaction , knowledge management , theoretical computer science , artificial intelligence , epistemic modal logic , sociology , mathematics , linguistics , philosophy , geometry , demography , parallel computing , multimodal logic , economics , description logic , programming language , economic growth
How do communities establish shared communication systems? The Common Knowledge view assumes that symbolic conventions develop through the accumulation of common knowledge regarding communication practices among the members of a community. In contrast with this view, it is proposed that coordinated communication emerges a by‐product of local interactions among dyads. A set of multi‐agent computer simulations show that a population of “egocentric” agents can establish and maintain symbolic conventions without common knowledge. In the simulations, convergence to a single conventional system was most likely and most efficient when agents updated their behavior on the basis of local rather than global, system‐level information. The massive feedback and parallelism present in the simulations gave rise to phenomena that are often assumed to result from complex strategic processing on the part of individual agents. The implications of these findings for the development of theories of language use are discussed.