Studying the Development of Spatial Cognition with Evolving Neuro-Agents

Studying the Development of Spatial Cognition with Evolving Neuro-Agents

This paper describes an evolutionary robotics approach to study spatial cognition. Through the analysis of evolving neuroagents, run on behavioral, computational and evolutionary/development level, we show how relevant is considering the dynamic perspective in the observed phenomenon genesis and how useful can be using the evolutionary robotics methodology to address this issue. The experiments described in this short paper use simulated agents led by an artificial neural network and evolved through artificial selection to accomplish some spatial tasks commonly used in animal psychology. Results indicate that behaviors, especially biases, can be understood only taking into account the evolutionary/ development pathway of each agent.