Contributed talk in Perception 1, July 29, 2019, 2:30 p.m. in room USB.4.005

Effects of Visual Sensory Range on the Emergence of Cognition in Early Terrestrial Vertebrates: An Agent-Based Modeling Approach

Can Gurkan, Leif Rasmussen, Uri Wilensky

watch Publication As water dwelling vertebrates began to progressively evolve features that enabled them to survive on land, they also developed larger eyes, which would have considerably increased their range of vision above water. This increase in visual range of early terrestrial vertebrates may have then facilitated their exploitation of new and abundant food sources on land and promoted increased cognitive capacity in the form of planning—the ability to contemplate many possible future scenarios (MacIver et al., 2017). In this study, we use a multi-level agent-based model to attempt to replicate the dynamics of the hypothetical evolutionary scenario described above. To do so, we use a novel method called agent-centric Monte Carlo cognition (ACMCC) (Head and Wilensky, 2018), which allows us to represent the agents' cognition in a quantifiable manner by performing micro-simulations in a separate agent-based model. In our simulations, we observe that as a population that is adapted to live on land emerges, their mean eye size and cognitive capacity increases.