Microscopic activity patterns in the Naming Game

TL;DR

This paper investigates how individual memory and network topology influence the microscopic dynamics of the Naming Game, a model for language formation, revealing that topological features significantly affect agent decision processes.

Contribution

It introduces a master equation approach to analyze the microscopic agent dynamics in the Naming Game on networks, highlighting the role of topological properties.

Findings

Agent memory dynamics depend on network topology.

Topological properties influence individual decision processes.

Memory-based negotiation processes are affected by network structure.

Abstract

The models of statistical physics used to study collective phenomena in some interdisciplinary contexts, such as social dynamics and opinion spreading, do not consider the effects of the memory on individual decision processes. On the contrary, in the Naming Game, a recently proposed model of Language formation, each agent chooses a particular state, or opinion, by means of a memory-based negotiation process, during which a variable number of states is collected and kept in memory. In this perspective, the statistical features of the number of states collected by the agents becomes a relevant quantity to understand the dynamics of the model, and the influence of topological properties on memory-based models. By means of a master equation approach, we analyze the internal agent dynamics of Naming Game in populations embedded on networks, finding that it strongly depends on very general topological properties of the system (e.g. average and fluctuations of the degree). However, the influence of topological properties on the microscopic individual dynamics is a general phenomenon that should characterize all those social interactions that can be modeled by memory-based negotiation processes.