Levels of Coupling in Dyadic Interaction: An Analysis of Neural and Behavioral Complexity

TL;DR

This paper investigates how different levels of coupling in dyadic interactions influence neural and behavioral complexity, demonstrating that richer internal structures can achieve complex dynamics even without social interaction.

Contribution

It introduces a conceptual distinction in coupling levels and tests the generalizability of previous findings with agents having more complex internal structures in non-social environments.

Findings

Agents with richer internal structures can reach neural complexity levels similar to social interaction scenarios.

Coupling levels significantly affect neural and behavioral complexity.

Non-social environments can produce complex dynamics comparable to social interactions.

Abstract

From an enactive approach, some previous studies have demonstrated that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the dynamics of neural and behavioral complexity of embodied agents. In particular, it has been shown that agents with a limited internal structure (2-neuron brains) that evolve in interaction can overcome this limitation and exhibit chaotic neural activity, typically associated with more complex dynamical systems (at least 3-dimensional). In the present paper we make two contributions to this line of work. First, we propose a conceptual distinction in levels of coupling between agents that could have an effect on neural and behavioral complexity. Second, we test the generalizability of previous results by testing agents with richer internal structure and evolving them in a richer, yet non-social, environment. We demonstrate that such agents can achieve levels of complexity comparable to agents that evolve in interactive settings. We discuss the significance of this result for the study of interaction.