Communication games: Modeling language evolution through dyadic agent interactions

This chapter focuses on how dyadic agent-based communication games are used to investigate language evolution. We start by putting communication games in brief historical and interdisciplinary context: similar approaches have been used across a variety of disciplines for close to 50 years. These have often existed in parallel, but nonetheless demonstrate a kind of convergent cultural evolution that speaks to the effectiveness of the method: dyadic communication games are a powerful tool for investigating language evolution and emergence. Focusing on the Lewis Signaling Game (LSG) and the Naming Game (NG), we make the similarities between different modeling traditions explicit by reducing them to their skeletal dynamics. Specific examples studying the role of sensory biases in the evolution of (color) categories are used to illustrate how game variations can lead to convergent but also complementary results. We further discuss strategies for implementing communication games including general strengths and weaknesses of the method, as well as how the approach has been extended to model and analyze various phenomena relevant to language evolution.