Emergence of social constructs and organizational behaviour How cognitive modelling enriches social

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Emergence of social constructs and organizational
behaviourHow cognitive modelling enriches social
simulation

• Martin Helmhout, Henk W.M. Gazendam René
  J.Jorna
• j.m.helmhout, h.w.m.gazendam, r.j.j.m.jorna_at_rug.
  nl

UNICES Seminar University of Utrecht
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Outline

• View of the organization
• Social constructs
• Cognitive architecture and simulation
• Types of learning
• Simulating the evolution of a social construct
• Discussion

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View of the organization

• Organization-gtreductionism, organizations are
  actors that interact (higher level / social
  simulation)
• Organization -gt constructivist point of
  viewactors have representation in their mind and
  in documents they use (lower level / cognitive
  approach)?Actors are intelligent reactive,
  pro-active, social, representation and autonomy.
• Environment ? affordances ? actions ? habits of
  action ? social constructs

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Social constructs

• A relatively persistent socially shared unit of
  knowledge, based on intertwined habits and mutual
  commitments often expressed in sign structures
• Aimed at cooperation and coordination
• Functions as mediator between cognitive and
  social level
• Types of social constructs
• Institutional or behavioral system (community)
• Plan, model for a group
• Bilateral between two actors

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Social constructs (2)

• Some Properties of social constructs
• Attached norms or rules
• Coded / tacit
• Life span
• Authority, responsibility and control
• Inheritance or prerequisite of other social
  constructs
• Scenario
• Context
• Roles and identification
• Grey area----gtevolution---------gt written (black
  on white)

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Social constructs (3)
Social constructs, actors and context
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Cognitive architecture and simulation

• Cognitive architectureboundedly rational mental
  representation of environment and itself
• Pro creates actors that are not empty state
  machines, but have a presentation and reasoning
  mechanism of their own.
• Con the architecture forces the researcher to
  invest into the inner workings and cognitive
  plausibility of the actor, thereby taking into
  account not alone what is happening at the social
  level but cognitive level as well
• CONSIDER do I need the complexity of another
  level to explain my results?

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Cognitive architecture and simulation
ACT-R (Anderson Lebiere, 1998) Three main
parts Goal stack, the goals an actor has to
solve Procedures reactors on goals Declarative
chunks facts created and experienced
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ACT-R and types of learning

• Declarative symbolic learning- knowledge
  creation internal cognition or based on
  perception
• Declarative sub-symbolic learning- knowledge
  strengthening -gt activation level- associative
  strength between goal and chunk

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ACT-R and types of learning
Learn
Forget
Time(t)
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ACT-R and types of learning

• procedural symbolic learning- generalization and
  specialization of procedures(not yet
  implemented)
• procedural sub-symbolic learning (P q r)q
  success ratio of direct executionr success
  ratio of procedure after achieving goalq, r
  successes / (successes failures)
• Event discounting present experiences are
  weighted more than past experience (forgotten)

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Learning from interaction

• Extension of ACT-R RBOT (Multi-Agent System)
• Putting actors in environment makes learning from
  each other behavior possible
• Other actors and objects are perceived as signs
  and encoded in the perception buffer of the actor
• Makes interaction and learning form interaction
  possible

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Bringing in the social (normative) level

• Cognitive architecture is specialized in task
  environment for the single agent
• Adding folk psychology (Georgeff et al.
  1998)Beliefs, Desires, Intentions (BDI)
• Adding a social construct level (Mead, 1934)
• Adding embodied cognition with help of
  subsumption (Brooks, 1991)

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Socially constructed actor (RBOT)
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Simulating the evolution of a social construct

• 2D environment actor has to decide to pass
  other actor left or right
• Do actors create a (tacit) social construct in
  which they have a preference for passing either
  left or right?

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Simulating the evolution of a social construct

• Iterated Prisoners dilemma (IPD)game theory
  (reductionism)

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Simulating the evolution of a social construct

• RBOT simulation shows two types of behavior1.
  Direct stabilization when choosing both the same
  strategy (left or right)2. Hopping behavior and
  after couple of collisions both have preference
  for the same strategy
• In the end, in both cases they select similar
  strategy and form similar preferences in their
  mind

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Simulating the evolution of a social construct

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Simulating the evolution of a social construct

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Simulating the evolution of a social construct

• As an observer from the outside it seemsactors
  reach a certain agreement or organization
• Looking inside the actors we seeboth developed
  equal cognitive map, based on interaction they
  reinforce each others behavior
• The social construct formed is existing out of-
  1 norm- unwritten- in this case endless
  lifespan- shared authority and control

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Transmission of Social construct(Coordination
mechanism )

• PRE-Conditions
• Actor A is a policeman, representing the
  authority
• Actor B obeys and beliefs actor A
• Actor A and B practice the same language (ACL)
• When actor B does not follow the law of driving
  at the right side, actor A sends a message
• This message is a social construct that functions
  as
• a coordination mechanism

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Transmission of Social construct(Coordination
mechanism )
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Conclusion

• Social constructs can fill in a mediators role
  between cognition and social simulation
• Cognitive architecture gives better tuning and
  understanding of the model at the lower level for
  explaining behaviour at the higher level
• Social simulation and MAS add (social)
  interaction to cognitive models

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DISCUSSION

• http//www.acis.nl/researchdocs/index.html