1. Simulating Attachment
Why simulate attachment?
Origins of Attachment theory
The target behaviours to be simulated
Design methodology and demo
Architectural design issues to be investigated
Narrow in :
developmental time frame
cognitive range/resources
type of behaviour

2. Why Simulate Attachment?
It provides a target for a design process - by building cognitive architectures to perform certain specific tasks we better understand architectures generally
Reproducing in simulation specific patterns of attachment behaviour acts as a ‘test-bed’ for developing architectural theories of human information processing

3. Why Simulate Attachment?
the developmental trajectory has normative stages which show representational change
initially only need to simulate limited cognitive resources
linked with evolutionary, physiological, anthropological, AI, cybernetic and cross-species data and theory
can abstract attachment behaviour

4. Origins of Attachment Theory
John Bowlby, The Attachment Trilogy
Psychoanalysis, Ethology, Evolutionary Theory and Cybernetics
Early concentration on long separations, loss, mistreatment and psychopathology
Changed hospital visiting practice
Later focus on Individual Differences

5. The target behaviour
The Strange Situation Experiment arose from comparing Ugandan and US infant attachment behaviours
Involves 3 separation/re-union stages
Each new stage increases the amount of anxiety they produce
Four patterns of response
A key pattern is link between home behaviour of mother and infant and infant behaviour on re-union in the SS

6. Infant reunion responses in the SS:
The target behaviour
Infant reunion responses in the SS:
Secure (B type) behaviour
positive, greeting, being comforted
Avoidant (A type) behaviour
not seeking contact, avoiding gaze
Ambivalent (C type) behaviour
not comforted, overly passive, show anger
Disorganised (D type) Behaviour
totally disorganised and confused

7. Maternal home behaviour prior to the SS
The target behaviour
Maternal home behaviour prior to the SS
sensitivity-insensitivity
acceptance-rejection
co-operation-interference
accessibility-ignoring
emotional expressiveness
rigidity(compulsiveness)-flexibility

8. Attachment SS Subgroups vs prior maternal home behaviour
The target behaviour
Attachment SS Subgroups vs prior maternal home behaviour
Simplification
effective but not sociable versus ineffective and sociable

9. Design methodology 3 Problems: Avoiding trivial solutions
Whether to use data or theory to constrain the simulation
Non-falsifiability
Narrow in :
developmental time frame
cognitive range/resources
type of behaviour

10. Design methodology Problem 1: Avoiding trivial solutions
The simulation is NOT trying reproduce superficial details of facial expression or body movement - like a Kismet robot might
It is trying to simulate the causal mechanisms behind the behaviour, at the level of goals and action plans within a complete agent in a multi-agent simulation
BUT an abstraction of the target behaviour in a broad and shallow complete agent is TOO easy to reproduce
Narrow in :
developmental time frame
cognitive range/resources
type of behaviour

11. Design methodology
Problem 1: Avoiding trivial solutions
How to constrain the possible hypotheses space to exclude trivial solutions?
Assume attachment styles are evolved, adaptive behaviours
Narrow in :
developmental time frame
cognitive range/resources
type of behaviour

12. Design methodology
Problem 1: Avoiding trivial solutions
Concentrating on Secure (B type), Avoidant (A type) and Ambivalent (C type) behaviours as potentially adaptive responses
Disorganised (D type) Behaviour is unlikely to be adaptive, but inclusion of this phenomena remains a possible future constraint

13. Design Methodology
Taking an evolutionary/adaptive approach the differences in infant security in the Baltimore and Uganda studies suggests the following questions:
Are Internal Working Models that are used in moments of attachment anxiety in part formed in episodes centred on non- anxious socialisation and exploration?
What information might infants gain from frequent episodes of exploration and social interaction that they use in infrequent episodes of attachment anxiety?
“If my carer won’t socially interact on my terms at all then I am less secure and I must use my own actions to gain security”
“If my carer sometimes socially interacts on my terms then I am less secure and need to concentrate my efforts in eliciting a response”

14. Design methodology
Problem 2: How to combine data, theory and AI techniques in the simulation - (Mook (1983) In defense of external invalidity)
Data and theories to be incorporated in the simulation
Data from the SS and other attachment studies
Bowlby’s theory
Distributed control architectures
Teleoreactive architectures
H-cogaff architecture
Theories of Executive Function - SAS
Machine learning algorithms (RL and ILP)
Narrow in :
developmental time frame
cognitive range/resources
type of behaviour

15. Design methodology Problem 3: Non-falsifiability
Duhem, Auxiliary Assumptions
Popper, Falsifiability and Broad and Shallow architectures
Lakatos,
Three kinds of falsification
Core assumptions and ad hoc assumptions
Progressive and Degenerative Problem Shifts
Narrow in :
developmental time frame
cognitive range/resources
type of behaviour

16. An unfinished simulation
Design methodology
An unfinished simulation
Narrow in :
developmental time frame
cognitive range/resources
type of behaviour

17. Architectural design issues
how goals are chosen and represented?
when goals are chosen how are consequent behaviours chosen?
whether SS behaviour is deliberative or reactive?
how skill acquisition, chunking, parsing, perceptual affordances relate to attachment?
when and how new subsystems come on-line in attachment stage changes?

18. Architectural design issues
Bowlby’s theory
Behavioural systems from ethology: attachment, exploration, fear and sociability
Stages defined by available control mechanisms: reflex (0-3), fixed action patterns (2-12), goal correction (9-36), goal corrected partnership (24- ), (age in months)
Coordination and control mechanisms: chaining, planning, ‘totes’, IWM’s and language
Duplicating much of shallice ie goal decider is a bit like contention scheduler
may be developed to include SAS and Schank’s stuff
Important to focus on time frames for behaviour, actions and acts
Payoff for specialisation
Chunking/parsing in perception of behaviours
use closer grained empirical data to refine arrows

19. The H-cogaff architecture
Architectural design issues
The H-cogaff architecture
Note: reactive has memory and planning

20. Architectural design issues
Shallice and Burgess - SAS and contention scheduling
The cogaff schema
SAS
Narrow in :
developmental time frame
cognitive range/resources
type of behaviour
contention scheduling

21. Bowlby’s Behaviours represented in an infant-cogaff architecture
Internal
Working
Model?
Duplicating much of shallice ie goal decider is a bit like contention scheduler
may be developed to include SAS and Schank’s stuff
Important to focus on time frames for behaviour, actions and acts
Payoff for specialisation
Chunking/parsing in perception of behaviours
use closer grained empirical data to refine arrows

22. Architectural design issues
Development
of partnership in planning as linguistic
competence
develops
Development of deliberative affordances or exploration and socialisation driven by deliberation?
Deliberation
in re-union episodes
Duplicating much of shallice ie goal decider is a bit like contention scheduler
may be developed to include SAS and Schank’s stuff
Important to focus on time frames for behaviour, actions and acts
Payoff for specialisation
Chunking/parsing in perception of behaviours
use closer grained empirical data to refine arrows

23. Architectural design issues
A distributed control system that adapts with Re-inforcement Learning at each node, has a non-central, non-symbolic representation, given by the genes, and undergoes no qualitative change in representation
A teleoreactive system that adapts using Inductive Logic Programming, has a simple central symbolic representation given by the genes that undergoes qualitative change in representation
Duplicating much of shallice ie goal decider is a bit like contention scheduler
may be developed to include SAS and Schank’s stuff
Important to focus on time frames for behaviour, actions and acts
Payoff for specialisation
Chunking/parsing in perception of behaviours
use closer grained empirical data to refine arrows