Emergence 2009: Final Projects, II

This aim of this model is to show different types of learning:

1) learning by experience and

2) learning through direct interaction (cultural learning).

The general idea is that agents that learn by experience engage in behavior that consists of making less mistakes. Learning by interaction results in a type of learning behavior that requires time in order to get the desired avoidance behavior. This is a relatively simple model that highlights the fact that not all learning behavior is the same and that in some types of environments, a type of learning has an advantage over another that can diminish over time.

What agents need to do:

-move, with some degree of randomness:
*the turtles all begin by moving around and navigating randomly
-observe, interact with world:
*this is present in my model in the turtles, which have to observe the patch color that they are on as they continue to navigate and proceed onto interacting with the world (the rest of the turtles)
-learn from interactions with world:
*this is the main point or objective of my model learning by experience and learning by interaction (cultural learning)
-get it less wrong - induction
*learn to associate red barriers as something that should be avoided adopt avoidance behavior so that eventually both types of learners are essentially acting and navigating in the same way in this environment.The more interactions you have and the more you are exposed to something, the more likely you are to get it wrong the next time.
**again, this is a very simple model and may not apply to all types of learning (such as fear and other things that become reinforced very quickly)
-create internal models of the world
*one in which the turtles learn to avoid barriers, even the ones that initially learned by experience

-setup button set all the starting conditions

-hit go to let the model start running

-hit the number-turtles button to set the number of turtles

Notice:

1) the starting color of the turtles

2) the different colored turtles that emerge, two types: Blue turtles and yellow turtles.

3) Notice the avoidance behavior of the turtles

4) The mistakes rate graph: look at how over time the number of mistakes for both groups of turtles change. What happens? The mistakes of the blue turtles decrease and become similar to those of the yellow turtles (direct experience learners)

You can try:

-adding varying the number of turtles to see how long it takes for the interaction learners and the direct experience learners to perform in the same way.
-add less turtles to closely watch the behavior of the turtles and the time when they change colors
-the TRACE button allows for one to see the paths that the turtles have taken
-the ESCAPE graph: keeps track of the number of BLUE (interaction learners) turtles that have left the central rectangle area. This graph only shows blue escapees, NOT yellow. Future models can include a graph for yellow escapees since they also escape and are not perfect in their avoidance behavior.