On the Emergence of Indexical and Symbolic Interpretation in Artificial Creatures, or What is This I Hear?

Communication processes rely on the production and interpretation of representations, thus an important issue is to understand what types of representations are involved during the emergence of interpretations. Here we present an experiment to evaluate conditions for the emergence of interpretations of different representation types. To design our experiment, we follow biological inspirations and a theoretical framework of representation processes. Our results show that different interpretations process can emerge depending on the adaptation cost of cognitive traits and on the availability of cognitive shortcuts.