Experimental Design and Facets of Evidence for Computational Theory of Mind

The competitive feeding paradigm is one of several experimental setups intended to test whether non-verbal subjects possess skills related to Theory of Mind. Competitive feeding focuses on the relationship between seeing and knowing. In this paper, we describe a highly-customizeable implementation of the competitive feeding paradigm for computational agents in a gridworld environment. We explore various modifications to the setup including shared rewards, alternate sequences of timed events, and asymmetrical values, that allow us to replicate a wide breadth of tests designed to study the social cognition skills of humans and animals. Finally, we describe how this paradigm can be expanded upon and used as a benchmark test to investigate social reasoning in artificially intelligent models.

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