<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD JATS (Z39.96) Journal Archiving and Interchange DTD v1.0 20120330//EN" "JATS-archivearticle1.dtd">
<article xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
  <front>
    <journal-meta />
    <article-meta>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>Towards a Model of the Interplay of Mentalizing and Mirroring in Embodied Communication</article-title>
      </title-group>
      <contrib-group>
        <aff id="aff0">
          <label>0</label>
          <institution>Sebastian Kahl</institution>
        </aff>
      </contrib-group>
      <fpage>300</fpage>
      <lpage>305</lpage>
      <abstract>
        <p>The social brain contains distinct networks for mentalizing as well as for mirroring-based action observation. We present work towards a model of how these two systems may interact during embodied communication. The model connects a mentalizing system for attributing and inferring different orders of belief about own and other's mental states, with a hierarchical predictive model for online action perception and production. We discuss interactions between both systems and describe simulation experiments in which two agents equipped with this model engage in embodied communication. Results demonstrate how mentalizing affords higher robustness of communication by enabling interactive grounding processes.</p>
      </abstract>
      <kwd-group>
        <kwd>Cognitive Modeling</kwd>
        <kwd>Social Cognition</kwd>
        <kwd>Mirroring</kwd>
        <kwd>Mentalizing</kwd>
        <kwd>Coordination</kwd>
        <kwd>Gesture</kwd>
        <kwd>Embodied Virtual Agents</kwd>
      </kwd-group>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
  <body>
    <sec id="sec-1">
      <title>Introduction</title>
      <p>
        A growing body of research has started to study the
cognitive mechanisms of social interaction and communication in
humans. Two partially overlapping networks have been
identified in the “social brain”
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref14">(Van Overwalle, 2009)</xref>
        : an
action observation system for perceiving and recognizing
others’ behavioral cues, and a mentalizing system for
understanding others in terms of attributed mental states or theory
of mind (ToM). Both systems have been studied a lot
separately. Action observation is nowadays widely assumed to
rest upon principles of prediction-based processing
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2">(A. Clark,
2013)</xref>
        . This means that predictions about expected sensory
stimuli (either caused by an observed stimuli or through
self-generated action) are continuously formed and evaluated
against incoming sensory input to determine a prediction
error that informs further processing. A core mechanism to
derive such predictions are covert simulations of the observed
behavior, based on own sensorimotor action representations
that are assumed to be shared between perception processes
and action production processes. This is what is also
referred to as mirroring in behavior perception. The principle
of prediction-based processing has also been argued to
account for language production and comprehension
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref9">(Pickering
&amp; Garrod, 2013)</xref>
        or the social brain more generally
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">(Frith &amp;
Frith, 2010)</xref>
        .
      </p>
      <p>Yet, what is less clear is the full picture of how the
mentalizing system and the mirroring system work together: How
does behavior perception change when a behavior is assumed
to be “for me”, i.e., intended to be socially meaningful? How
are perception-action couplings modulated by social
interaction and mentalizing? How do these processes enable
coordination devices in communication like feedback, joint
attention, or grounding?</p>
      <p>
        While a number of mechanisms have been hypothesized,
these questions are far from being answered. What is
undisputed is that interacting with other agents assumed to
be “intentional” is fundamentally different from
interacting with non-intentional things or objects
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref7">(Gangopadhyay &amp;
Schilbach, 2012)</xref>
        . That is, intentionality-attribution and
underlying mentalizing influence sensory processing to become
“social perception”
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref12 ref16">(Wykowska, Wiese, Prosser, &amp; Mu¨ller,
2014; Teufel, Fletcher, &amp; Davis, 2010)</xref>
        . A key component to
trigger this intentional stance is social attention, most
prominently signaled through gaze
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref12">(Teufel et al., 2010)</xref>
        . For
example, Ciaramidaro, Becchio, Colle, Bara, and Walter (2014)
recently found that social gaze leads to the attribution of
communicative intent, which in turn differentially recruits the
mirror neuron system and mentalizing system networks in
processing the behavior of the (now considered) interlocutor.
Clearly, these processes play an important role not only in the
solitary observation events in which they have been studied
mostly so far, but even more so in continuous online
interaction
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref11 ref8">(Myllyneva &amp; Hietanen, 2015; Schilbach et al., 2013)</xref>
        .
      </p>
      <p>In this paper, we present work towards a model of how
a mentalizing system interacts with a mirroring-based action
observation system in continuous online interaction. In the
remainder of this paper, we first review related modeling
attempts and then present an integrated model that formalizes
the two systems in terms of computational processes, as well
as their roles and dynamic interplay in inter-agent
communication. We report results from simulations of embodied
communication with hand gesture, gaze, and head nods/shakes,
between two virtual agents each of which equipped with the
integrated model. We analyze how different abilities for
mentalizing enable increasingly complex social coordination,
from mere mimicry to eventually shared understanding.</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-2">
      <title>Related work</title>
      <p>
        So far there have only been few attempts to combine
mentalizing, perception and action control in dynamic social
interaction. In their MOSAIC model,
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref15">Wolpert, Doya, and Kawato
(2003</xref>
        ) underline that a true communicative model needs to
close the communicative loop and must be perceptive to the
observer’s responses and ultimately her understanding. In
their model, a hierarchy of paired forward and inverse models
is hypothesized as a basic mechanism for processing
movement as well as beliefs or intentions.
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref10">Sadeghipour and Kopp
(2011)</xref>
        present the Empirical Bayesian Belief Update model
(EBBU), a probabilistic model that implements a
mirroringbased account of the perception and production of iconic
gestures. In this model, a hierarchically organized representation
of motor knowledge is used during action perception by
forward models that formulate probabilistic expectations about
possible continuations of the observed gesture. The same
representation is used for action generation, with probabilistic
interactions between both processes to model e.g. priming
and resonance effects, and it is expanded by way of inverse
models when an unknown action is encountered.
      </p>
      <p>
        A Bayesian approach to modeling intention inference is
presented by
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref5">Diaconescu et al. (2014)</xref>
        . They apply a
hierarchical Gaussian filter approach to learn the intentionality of
others through updating the beliefs about others’ intentions
during an interaction game. This framework captures
individual social learning differences in order to predict the
participants’ perspective-taking abilities and trustworthiness. A
similarly effective approach to modeling a mentalizing
module was implemented by
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref4">Devaine, Hollard, and Daunizeau
(2014</xref>
        ), who applied it to a gambling game scenario.
Participants had to play against a Bayesian mentalizing model that
could employ several levels of ToM belief attributions, from
zero up to a third-order ToM. Results show that only
participants who were framed to apply ToM could beat the Bayesian
mentalizing model.
      </p>
      <p>
        Few attempts have been made to clarify the interaction
between mentalizing and mirroring. A meta-analysis of studies
on mentalizing found that mirror areas are not recruited
unless the task involves inferencing intentionality from action
stimuli
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref14">(Van Overwalle, 2009)</xref>
        .
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref12">Teufel et al. (2010)</xref>
        present
the “Perceptual Mentalizing Model” which focuses on the
influence of the mentalizing system on the mirror system via
perceptual processing in the STS area. They differentiate
between explicit and implicit theory of mind (what we call here
mentalizing and mirroring, respectively) and associate the
areas mPFC and TPJ to the former and the mirror neuron
system to the later kind of ToM processing. Importantly, both
kinds of ToM are assumed to be influenced by social
sensory processing. Explicit ToM processes are associated with
processing of the intentionality of a movement and have a
strong influence on area STS, which acts as a gating
mechanism to increase or decrease perception-action coupling in
implicit ToM processing.
      </p>
      <p>
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref16">Wykowska et al. (2014)</xref>
        present a model of social
attention, the “Intentional Stance Model”, according to which the
mentalizing system either exhibits a design stance or an
intentional stance. The latter would be exhibited towards agents to
whom mental states are attributed, while the former is applied
to objects without intentionality attribution. Again,
mentalizing is also associated to areas mPFC and TPJ, while social
sensory processing is associated to area STS. The
mentalizing system is assumed to influence sensory processing in a
top-down fashion, but also to affect sensory gain control in
attention mechanisms. They report the sensory gain
manipulation for attentional reorienting mechanisms to be stronger
in the intentional stance than in the design stance. A key
aspect in triggering this intentional stance seems to be social
gaze, which has been found to lead to the attribution of
communicative intent
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1">(Ciaramidaro et al., 2014)</xref>
        , which in turn
differentially recruits the mirroring and mentalizing system
networks in processing the behavior of the interlocutor.
      </p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-3">
      <title>Towards an integrated model</title>
      <p>In this paper we present a novel model of how a predictive
sensorimotor subsystem for action observation and
production is coupled with a mentalizing subsystem for attributing
mental states, to enable situated communication between
embodied agents. To that end, and as described below, we embed
the models in virtual agents and let them interact nonverbally
to test how communicative coordination emerges from the
interplay between the two subsystems (see Fig. 1).</p>
      <p>
        We base our modeling approach on a number of
assumptions: First, we define successful communication to be a
process leading into shared communicative intentionality and
established perceptual or conceptual common ground between
the participants
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref13">(Tomasello, 2008)</xref>
        . This state is achieved in a
dynamic grounding process
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3">(H. H. Clark &amp; Brennan, 1991)</xref>
        ,
in which communicating agents mutually present and
coordinate their subjectively held beliefs about each other as well
as the state of the interaction. Second, mentalizing plays a
pivotal role in this through facilitating information
integration and self-other distinction for coordinated action. It
receives information from, and affects the mirroring
subsystem, which itself processes perceived action in an
immediate fashion and feeds into higher-level mentalizing. Third,
we assume that coordinated action in communication highly
depends on the order of ToM realized by the mentalizing
subsystem. 2nd order reasoning, i.e. beliefs about other-beliefs,
is minimally necessary for any cooperative behavior that goes
beyond accidental coordination. Finally, gaze plays a special
      </p>
      <sec id="sec-3-1">
        <title>Agent A</title>
        <sec id="sec-3-1-1">
          <title>Mentalizing</title>
        </sec>
        <sec id="sec-3-1-2">
          <title>Mirroring</title>
          <p>Social gaze
(comm. intent)
Head nod/shake
(meta comm.)</p>
          <p>Gestures
(referential comm.)</p>
        </sec>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-3-2">
        <title>Agent B</title>
        <sec id="sec-3-2-1">
          <title>Mentalizing</title>
        </sec>
        <sec id="sec-3-2-2">
          <title>Mirroring</title>
          <p>
            role in signaling and regulating social attention and
communicative intent. Mirror areas were found to be recruited
especially when intentional action is expected
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref14">(Van Overwalle,
2009)</xref>
            and one indicator for communicative intention is social
gaze
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1">(Ciaramidaro et al., 2014)</xref>
            . We hence assume that gaze
triggers mentalizing and thus also mirroring activity. Staying
within the confines of the nonverbal domain, we also include
head-nods and head-shakes as feedback signals for agreement
and disagreement.
          </p>
          <p>Mentalizing subsystem
The mentalizing subsystem is a model of an agent’s
subjective ToM, which processes definite information about itself
and needs to infer others’ mental states from perceptual input.
A detailed depiction of the mentalizing subsystem is given in
Figure 2, which we will refer to and describe in more detail
in the Simulation results section. In its current version, the
subsystem utilizes a rather simple set of inference heuristics
to model how mental state attributions arise and change in
social interaction. In detail, this mentalizing model consists
of three sets of mental state attributes for different orders of
ToM reasoning: Beliefs held about mental states of myself
(me) or the interlocutor (you) constitute what we call 1st
order ToM. In pursuit of a minimal cognitive model of
mentalizing, we assume that only one order of ToM higher is needed
for what we want to model. In contrast to the classical
recursively nested beliefs (beliefs about beliefs about...), however,
we stipulate these beliefs to be held about mental states that
both interlocutors have in common (we). This is what we call
2nd-order ToM. Generally, mental states consist of beliefs,
desires, and intentions. The functional role that we ascribe to
2nd order ToM is to keep track of common ground, the desire
to agree, and the collaborative state of communication more
generally.</p>
          <p>
            Mirroring subsystem
We adopt the Empirical Bayesian Belief Update model
(EBBU)
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref10">(Sadeghipour &amp; Kopp, 2011)</xref>
            for action
observation and production. It implements a probabilistic
hierarchical representation of sensorimotor knowledge about iconic
gestures, along with basic prediction, evaluation and
activation processes that are used both in perception and
generation of gestures. On the lowest level motor commands are
stored that represent single movement segments in time and
space. Hand trajectories are given as directed graphs with
their edges representing the motor commands. On the
intermediate level, motor programs represent paths in the motor
command graph. In that way each motor program stands for a
meaningful movement. The highest level of abstraction stores
motor schemas that cluster similar motor programs to
represent functional equivalence classes (e.g. depicting similar
shapes). When observing a gesture trajectory, probabilistic
forward models predict expectations about possible
continuations of the observed gesture by running internal simulations
on all levels of the hierarchy in parallel. While simulating,
the hierarchical motor knowledge structure “resonates” to the
observed gesture performance. In each time step, the model’s
predictions are compared to the actual perception in order to
evaluate the corresponding motor commands, programs, or
schemas. When no corresponding representation of the
observed behavior can be found in the knowledge structure,
inverse models can execute a motor learning mechanism that
imparts the novel behavior into the motor command graph
and corresponding motor program and schema, when no
similar schema exists.
          </p>
          <p>
            Our model of a sensorimotor subsystem employs this
EBBU model and is equipped with knowledge about
schemas, programs and commands of different gesture
trajectories for ‘circle’, ‘square’, ‘surface’ and ‘waving’. Those
were learned from real human motion data. Single motor
programs for a schema can take up to five seconds to produce,
with motor commands being activated every tenth of a
second. For every new observation of a hand trajectory entering
the subsystem, posterior probability distributions are updated
using the EBBU rule
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref10">(Sadeghipour &amp; Kopp, 2011)</xref>
            . The
topmost level distributions about motor schemas are taken as a
proxy for a gesture’s meaning, and are linked to 1st order
mental state attributes in the mentalizig subsystem.
Integration and interplay
Our goal is to integrate mentalizing with mirroring-based
action perception to account for how behavior and mental states
arise and interact dynamically in a communicative
interaction.
          </p>
          <p>
            In other models of mentalizing
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref12 ref16">(Teufel et al., 2010;
Wykowska et al., 2014)</xref>
            , the detection of social gaze plays
a crucial role. In our model, it triggers an inference for
communicative intent to the gazing agent, which in turn affects
further processing of its behavior. In particular, as long as
the intention to communicate can be inferred, for any
observed gesture processed by the mirroring subsystem, the
most likely motor schema hypothesis is immediately
projected into the mentalizing subsystem where it forms a
mental state attributed as a you-belief. This resembles the gating
mechanism of area STS as suggested by
            <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref12">Teufel et al. (2010)</xref>
            .
Correspondingly, a me-belief would cause the mirroring
subsystem to recruit the intended motor schema for production.
The current version of the mirroring subsystem is only
capable of processing hand gestures; gaze and head movements
are thus directly asserted to the mentalizing subsystem.
          </p>
          <p>Depending on the degree of ToM available in the agent’s
mentalizing subsystem, communicative intent can trigger an
inferred desire to reach mutual agreement about the
understanding of the produced gesture. This is assessed by
applying a threshold for good-enough understanding to the
likelihood of beliefs about mental states of me and you (1st
order ToM). Note, however, when this threshold is exceeded
the producer agent still cannot be certain about the correct
understanding in the recipient unless sufficient feedback is
provided. Here, we require at least one correct reproduction
of the gesture. Further, head-shake and head-nod signals are
employed for meta-communication and can either increase or
C1: DCM )
C2: ICY )</p>
          <p>IM</p>
          <p>C</p>
          <p>DCY
C3: DCY ^ ¬P Y ^ P M )</p>
          <p>ICM (P M )
C4: DCM ^ DCY ) ICW
C5: ICW ^ P M ^ P Y )
C6: ICW ^ ¬P W )</p>
          <p>P W</p>
          <p>ICM (Hshake) ^ ICM (P M )
C7: ICW ^ ICY (Hnod) ^ ¬P Y )</p>
          <p>ICM (Hshake)
C8: ICW ^ P W )
C9: ICW ^ P W )</p>
          <p>ICM (Hnod)
DAW</p>
          <p>Presentation phase
Acceptance phase</p>
          <p>Agreement</p>
          <p>Y
R1: IC )
R2: DCM )</p>
          <p>DCY
IM</p>
          <p>C
R3: DCM ^ DCY ) ICW
R4: ICW ^ P 0Y ^ P M )
R5: ICW ^ P M ^ P Y )
R6: IW</p>
          <p>C ^ ICY (Hnod) )
R7: ICW ^ ICY (Hshake) ^ ICY (P Y ) )
R8: ICW ^ ICY (Hshake) ) ICM (P M )
R9: ICW ^ P W )
R10: ICW ^ P W )</p>
          <p>ICM (Hnod)
DAW
(P M = P Y ) ^ ICM (P M )
P W
(P Y )</p>
          <p>P W )</p>
          <p>Probabilistic variables
I
(Un)specific intention to
communicate
P
Perceived or produced
belief
D
Desire about
communication (me &amp;
you) or agreement (we)
M / Y / W
Mental state attribution
to me/you/we
C
Communication</p>
          <p>A
P M = P Y = ; Agreement</p>
          <p>H
Head signal
1st order Theory of Mind
2nd order Theory of Mind</p>
        </sec>
      </sec>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-4">
      <title>Simulation results</title>
      <p>In order to test the model in online interactions we
implemented the model and ran simulations with two virtual
agents, each of which equipped with its own integrated
model. At the start of the simulation, both agents only have
a predefined set of mental states about themselves. They
can communicate using four gestures (‘circle’, ‘square’,
‘surface’, and ‘waving’) that are perceived and generated as 3D
hand trajectories, as well as head nods/shakes that are
transferred as simple timed key-value pairs. Gestures are
produced with a configured amount of white noise, normalized
to the maximum movement vectors in the motor schema, so
that 10% noise reflect only a small amount of deviation
during gesturing. The amount of noise, the ability for 2nd
order ToM, and the good-enough threshold for minimal
confidence in observing a gesture are the independent variables to
parametrize the simulation.</p>
      <p>
        We ran six simulation setups: 10%/20%/30% noise with
enabled or disabled 2nd order ToM capacity, and a static
confidence threshold of 0:8. Each of the setups was run 100
times, always with identically configured agents.
Simulations ended either when both agents believed to have reached
agreement, or without 2nd order ToM, as soon as the
Communicator finished its gesture production. As dependent
variables we collected the probability distribution of the
attributed you-belief about a gesture’s meaning after every
processing of a hand trajectory. We were particularly interested
in the effects that different degrees of mentalizing have on
the inter-agent coordination dynamics. The complexity of
the communication depends on inferred communicative
intent, signaled via social gaze. As soon as mutual
communicative intent is established, the simulation follows a typical
grounding process with presentation and acceptance phases
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3">(H. H. Clark &amp; Brennan, 1991)</xref>
        , where the Communicator
always starts with producing a ‘circle’ gesture.
      </p>
      <p>To examplify the effect of the mental attributions and
inferences possible in 1st and 2nd order ToM, Figure 3 illustrates
two typical interaction patterns from our simulation study.
The overt behavior of two agents, a Communicator and a
Recipient, are shown along with the inferences drawn after
perceiving or producing a certain behavior, with indices referring
to the inference rules as shown in Figure 2.</p>
      <p>The interaction at the bottom shows a sequence of
behavior and inferences typical for 1st order ToM mentalizing. The
configured desire to communicate triggers rule C1, hence
gaze behavior is perceived by the Recipient (rule R1). Since
the Recipient is equally configured, its reciprocal gaze
behavior (rule R2) triggers an inference about the Recipient’s desire
to communicate in the Communicator (rule C2), and
consequently a gesture is produced (rule C3).</p>
      <p>The interaction at the top shows behavior and inferences
enabled through 2nd order ToM. While in the beginning there
is a similarity to the 1st order ToM interaction, additionally
rules R3 and C4 are triggered and establish the agents’
common communicative intent and thus the foundation for
meaningful coordination behavior. After the initial gesture
production the Recipient’s mirroring subsystem provides the
mentalizing subsystem with the most likely interpretation for the
Communicator’s behavior. That novel behavior triggers rule
R4, by which the Recipient would ideally produce the
understood gesture back to the Communicator, but in this
interaction the gesture was understood with a likelihood above the
good-enough threshold. This triggers rule R5 and R9 as well,
leading to a head-nod. Since the Communicator has no idea
what the Recipient has understood the head-nod behavior is</p>
      <p>Head shake
Head nod</p>
      <p>R8</p>
      <p>Head nod
Gesture
production</p>
      <p>Head nod</p>
      <p>R6 &amp;
R9 &amp;
R10
ToMCommunicator
r
e
d
r
o
d
n
2
ithRecipient
W
t
oTMCommunicator
r
e
d
r
o
t
s
1
y
lnRecipient
O</p>
      <p>C1</p>
      <p>R1 &amp;
R2 &amp;
R3
Gaze
R1 &amp;
R2</p>
      <p>C2 &amp;
C3 &amp;
C4
Gaze
C2 &amp;
C3
Gaze</p>
      <p>Gesture
production</p>
      <p>R4 &amp;
R5 &amp;</p>
      <p>R9
Gesture
production
answered by a head-shake (rule C7), which triggers the
Recipient to produce its understood gesture back to the
Communicator (rule R8). The Communicator understands the
gesture, which triggers rules equivalent to those in the Recipient
(rule C5, C8, and C9), leading to a head-nod, which is
equivalently answered by the Recipient (rule R6, and R9) and
finalizes the interaction through mutually believed agreement
(rule R10).</p>
      <p>ce2.0
n
e
g
r
ive1.5
D
r
leb1.0
i
e
L
cah0.5
b
l
u
K0.00</p>
      <p>Head-shake signal
5 sec interactions
10 sec interactions
20 sec interactions
50</p>
      <p>100
Time sec/10
150
200</p>
      <p>To test the agents’ ability to coordinate with and without
2nd order ToM enabled, we analyzed the Kulbach-Leibler
Divergence between the probability distributions of the
Recipient’s you-belief and the Communicator’s me-belief, i.e.
the “target belief”. Figure 4 shows the divergence over
interaction time. Without 2nd order ToM only one gesture was
produced within 5 seconds. With 2nd order ToM the duration
was strongly dependend on the correct understanding of
observed gestures. The more mistakes, due to noise, the more
correction effort emerged and hence longer interactions.
Analyzed were interactions with length of at least 10 seconds and
20 seconds, respectively. These plots show the average
success of coordination, especially in longer interactions. To test
the effect of noise we compared the success of both agents
reaching the target belief within last three hand position
samples before the 5 second mark, averaged over ToM conditions
(Figure 5(a)). The comparison shows a significant difference
(t(1198) = 2:4, p &lt; 0:05, d = 0:14) between 10% (M = 0:6,
SD = 0:4) and 30% (M = 0:7, SD = 0:5) noise conditions
on gesture understanding. Subsequently, we tested the
influence of 2nd order ToM, also by analyzing the success of
reaching the target belief (Figure 5(b)). A comparison of the
final beliefs averaged over all noise conditions with 2nd order
ToM (M = 0:9, SD = 0:27) and without (M = 0:7, SD = 0:45)
showed that 2nd order ToM leads to significantly more likely
success in coordination (t(598) = 6:8, p &lt; 0:01, d = 0:56).</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-5">
      <title>Conclusions</title>
      <p>In this paper we have investigated the questions how mere
action observation needs to be complemented by higher order
mentalizing, and how those systems need to interact in order
to account for the dynamic inter-agent coordination
mechanisms that are required for successful communication. Our
view is based on the notion that there is a strong difference
in the interaction with intentional, versus non-intentional
entities. To that end we augmented a predictive action
observation system with a ‘minimal’ mentalizing model that enables
distinct mental perspectives corresponding to beliefs about
me, you, and we.</p>
      <p>Our approach is to explicate possible interactions between
mentalizing and mirroring in terms of computational process
models that can be implemented and tested in actual
simulations of dynamic unfolding interactions. Here, we
investigated whether 1st order mental state attributions are
sufficient to infer the information necessary to successfully act
towards a communicative goal, or whether higher order theory
of mind can give a distinct advantage. Our results
demonstrate that mentalizing affords interactive grounding and thus
makes communication significantly more robust and efficient.
However, even with higher order mentalizing capacities, a too
large perturbation of the communicative signals led to long
interaction times due to the inefficient error correcting
mechanism emerging from both agents’ goal for successful
communication. Still, we established in a first prototypical
modeling attempt that mentalizing is crucial for meaningful
coordination behavior, and success in communication could not
be established without 2nd order mental state attributes. We
are thus confident that the present framework presents a good
basis for further investigation of social cognitive processes,
which Neuroscience is currently not yet able to elucidate. For
one, we aim to provide an account for how agents
dynamically compensate for noise by strategically altering their
signaling behavior. Another question to pursue is how self-other
distinctions manifest themselves in the sensorimotor system,
e.g. when observing other agents while performing an action
oneself.</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-6">
      <title>Acknowledgements</title>
      <p>This research/work was supported by the Cluster of
Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology ’CITEC’ (EXC 277)
at Bielefeld University, which is funded by the German
Research Foundation (DFG).</p>
    </sec>
  </body>
  <back>
    <ref-list>
      <ref id="ref1">
        <mixed-citation>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Ciaramidaro</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>A.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Becchio</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>C.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Colle</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>L.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Bara</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>B. G.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          , &amp;
          <string-name>
            <surname>Walter</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>H.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          (
          <year>2014</year>
          ,
          <article-title>July)</article-title>
          .
          <article-title>Do you mean me? Communicative intentions recruit the mirror and the mentalizing system</article-title>
          .
          <source>Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience</source>
          ,
          <volume>9</volume>
          (
          <issue>7</issue>
          ),
          <fpage>909</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>916</lpage>
          . doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          .1093/scan/nst062
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref2">
        <mixed-citation>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Clark</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>A.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          (
          <year>2013</year>
          , June).
          <article-title>Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science</article-title>
          .
          <source>Behavioral and Brain Sciences</source>
          ,
          <volume>36</volume>
          (
          <issue>03</issue>
          ),
          <fpage>181</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>204</lpage>
          . doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          .1017/S0140525X12000477
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref3">
        <mixed-citation>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Clark</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>H. H.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          , &amp;
          <string-name>
            <surname>Brennan</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>S. E.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          (
          <year>1991</year>
          ).
          <article-title>Grounding in communication</article-title>
          .
          <source>In Perspectives on socially shared cognition</source>
          (Vol.
          <volume>13</volume>
          , pp.
          <fpage>127</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>149</lpage>
          ). Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association. doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          .1037/
          <fpage>10096</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>006</lpage>
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref4">
        <mixed-citation>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Devaine</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>M.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Hollard</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>G.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          , &amp;
          <string-name>
            <surname>Daunizeau</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>J.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          (
          <year>2014</year>
          , December).
          <article-title>The Social Bayesian Brain: Does Mentalizing Make a Difference When We Learn? PLoS computational biology</article-title>
          ,
          <volume>10</volume>
          (
          <issue>12</issue>
          ),
          <year>e1003992</year>
          .
          <source>doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003992</source>
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref5">
        <mixed-citation>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Diaconescu</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>A. O.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Mathys</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>C.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Weber</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>L. a. E.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Daunizeau</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>J.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Kasper</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>L.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Lomakina</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>E. I.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          , . . .
          <string-name>
            <surname>Stephan</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>K. E.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          (
          <year>2014</year>
          ,
          <article-title>September)</article-title>
          .
          <article-title>Inferring on the intentions of others by hierarchical bayesian learning</article-title>
          .
          <source>PLoS computational biology</source>
          ,
          <volume>10</volume>
          (
          <issue>9</issue>
          ),
          <year>e1003810</year>
          .
          <source>doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003810</source>
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref6">
        <mixed-citation>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Frith</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>U.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          , &amp;
          <string-name>
            <surname>Frith</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>C.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          (
          <year>2010</year>
          , January).
          <article-title>The social brain: allowing humans to boldly go where no other species has been</article-title>
          .
          <source>Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B</source>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Biological</surname>
            <given-names>sciences</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <volume>365</volume>
          (
          <issue>1537</issue>
          ),
          <fpage>165</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>176</lpage>
          . doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          .1098/rstb.
          <year>2009</year>
          .0160
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref7">
        <mixed-citation>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Gangopadhyay</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>N.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          , &amp;
          <string-name>
            <surname>Schilbach</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>L.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          (
          <year>2012</year>
          ,
          <article-title>July)</article-title>
          .
          <article-title>Seeing minds: A neurophilosophical investigation of the role of perception-action coupling in social perception</article-title>
          .
          <source>Social Neuroscience</source>
          ,
          <volume>7</volume>
          (
          <issue>4</issue>
          ),
          <fpage>410</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>423</lpage>
          . doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          .1080/17470919.
          <year>2011</year>
          .633754
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref8">
        <mixed-citation>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Myllyneva</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>A.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          , &amp;
          <string-name>
            <surname>Hietanen</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>J. K.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          (
          <year>2015</year>
          , January).
          <article-title>There is more to eye contact than meets the eye</article-title>
          .
          <source>Cognition</source>
          ,
          <volume>134</volume>
          ,
          <fpage>100</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>109</lpage>
          . doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          .1016/j.cognition.
          <year>2014</year>
          .
          <volume>09</volume>
          .011
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref9">
        <mixed-citation>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Pickering</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>M. J.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          , &amp;
          <string-name>
            <surname>Garrod</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>S.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          (
          <year>2013</year>
          ,
          <article-title>August)</article-title>
          .
          <article-title>An integrated theory of language production and comprehension</article-title>
          .
          <source>The Behavioral and brain sciences</source>
          ,
          <volume>36</volume>
          (
          <issue>4</issue>
          ),
          <fpage>329</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>47</lpage>
          . doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          .1017/S0140525X12001495
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref10">
        <mixed-citation>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Sadeghipour</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>A.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          , &amp;
          <string-name>
            <surname>Kopp</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>S.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          (
          <year>2011</year>
          ,
          <article-title>September)</article-title>
          .
          <source>Embodied Gesture Processing: Motor-Based Integration of Perception and Action in Social Artificial Agents. Cognitive computation</source>
          ,
          <volume>3</volume>
          (
          <issue>3</issue>
          ),
          <fpage>419</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>435</lpage>
          . doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          .1007/s12559-010-9082-z
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref11">
        <mixed-citation>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Schilbach</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>L.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Timmermans</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>B.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Reddy</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>V.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Costall</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>A.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Bente</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>G.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Schlicht</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>T.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          , &amp;
          <string-name>
            <surname>Vogeley</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>K.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          (
          <year>2013</year>
          ,
          <article-title>August)</article-title>
          .
          <article-title>Toward a second-person neuroscience</article-title>
          .
          <source>The Behavioral and brain sciences</source>
          ,
          <volume>36</volume>
          (
          <issue>4</issue>
          ),
          <fpage>393</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>414</lpage>
          . doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          .1017/S0140525X12000660
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref12">
        <mixed-citation>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Teufel</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>C.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Fletcher</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>P. C.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          , &amp;
          <string-name>
            <surname>Davis</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>G.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          (
          <year>2010</year>
          ).
          <article-title>Seeing other minds: Attributed mental states influence perception</article-title>
          .
          <source>Trends in Cognitive Sciences</source>
          ,
          <volume>14</volume>
          (
          <issue>8</issue>
          ),
          <fpage>376</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>382</lpage>
          . doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          .1016/j.tics.
          <year>2010</year>
          .
          <volume>05</volume>
          .005
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref13">
        <mixed-citation>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Tomasello</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>M.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          (
          <year>2008</year>
          ).
          <article-title>Origins of Human Communication</article-title>
          . Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          .1353/lan.0.
          <fpage>0163</fpage>
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref14">
        <mixed-citation>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Van Overwalle</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>F.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          (
          <year>2009</year>
          , March).
          <article-title>Social cognition and the brain: a meta-analysis</article-title>
          .
          <source>Human brain mapping</source>
          ,
          <volume>30</volume>
          (
          <issue>3</issue>
          ),
          <fpage>829</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>58</lpage>
          . doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          .1002/hbm.20547
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref15">
        <mixed-citation>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Wolpert</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>D. M.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Doya</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>K.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          , &amp;
          <string-name>
            <surname>Kawato</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>M.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          (
          <year>2003</year>
          , March).
          <article-title>A unifying computational framework for motor control and social interaction</article-title>
          .
          <source>Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B</source>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Biological</surname>
            <given-names>sciences</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <volume>358</volume>
          (
          <issue>1431</issue>
          ),
          <fpage>593</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>602</lpage>
          . doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          .1098/rstb.
          <year>2002</year>
          .1238
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref16">
        <mixed-citation>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Wykowska</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>A.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Wiese</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>E.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <surname>Prosser</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>A.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          , &amp; Mu¨ller,
          <string-name>
            <surname>H. J.</surname>
          </string-name>
          (
          <year>2014</year>
          ).
          <article-title>Beliefs about the minds of others influence how we process sensory information</article-title>
          .
          <source>PLoS ONE</source>
          ,
          <volume>9</volume>
          (
          <issue>4</issue>
          ). doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          .1371/journal.pone.0094339
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
    </ref-list>
  </back>
</article>