Abstraction relations between internal and behavioural agent models for collective decision making

Abstract

For agent-based modelling of collective phenomena, more and more agent models are employed that go beyond simple reactive behaviour. Such less trivial individual behaviours can be modelled either from an agent-internal perspective, in the form of direct (causal) temporal relations between internal states of the agent, or from an agent-external, behavioural perspective, in the form of more complex input-output relations for the agent. Illustrated by a case study on collective decision making, this paper addresses how the two types of agent models can be related to each other. First an internal agent model for collective decision making is presented, based on neurological principles. It is shown how by an automated systematic transformation from an internal agent model an abstracted behavioural model can be obtained, by abstracting from the internal states. The abstraction approach introduced includes specific methods for abstraction of internal loops, as often occur in neurologically inspired internal agent models, for example to be able to model mutual interaction between cognitive and affective states. As an example of a given behavioural agent model, an existing behavioural agent model for collective decision making incorporating principles on social diffusion is described. It is shown under which conditions and how by an interpretation mapping the obtained abstracted behavioural agent model can be related to this existing behavioural agent model for collective decision making.