Forgetting Our Way to Shared Meaning: Effects of Forgetting on Conceptual Alignment in a Non-Partnership Coordination Game

2026-07-13

AI Summary

This study investigates how memory forgetting mechanisms in agents influence the emergence of shared semantics in non-cooperative coordination games, with a focus on the distinction between pragmatic (actual) concept alignment and perceptual alignment. By constructing a multi-agent computational cognitive model equipped with tunable adaptive strategies and a dynamic information-weighting mechanism, the work presents the first systematic analysis—within a non-partner framework—of how memory decay affects conceptual convergence. The findings reveal that adaptive agents achieve faster pragmatic semantic convergence and exhibit more consistent consensus regions, whereas non-adaptive agents display earlier perceptual convergence. Moreover, dynamically decreasing the weight assigned to new information over time yields more stable consensus than fixed weighting schemes, thereby uncovering a dissociation between pragmatic and perceptual convergence and demonstrating its dependence on memory mechanisms.

Abstract

Shared meaning in language requires people to learn and agree on categories. We ask how characteristics of agents' memories change the emergence and evolution of shared meaning. Without a coordination game, models of conceptual semantics cannot explain how shared meaning emerges and changes in groups of people; however, existing games assume that players share payoffs in a partnership setting. We model conceptual alignment as a non-partnership game and illustrate differences in actual and perceived conceptual convergence from counterfactual simulations using agents with varying levels of adaptiveness and memory degradation. We found that adaptive players achieved actual convergence faster and had closer final conceptual regions than non-adaptive players, while non-adaptive players perceived convergence earlier. Weighing novel information less over time resulted in more stable agreements than fixing the weight of novel information. Memory features are critical to the emergence and evolution of actual and perceived convergence.

Problem

• conceptual alignment
• forgetting
• shared meaning
• coordination game
• memory degradation

Innovation

• non-partnership coordination game
• conceptual alignment
• memory degradation
• adaptive agents
• shared meaning