@article {2022, title = {The Long-Term Efficacy of {\textquotedblleft}Social Buffering{\textquotedblright} in Artificial Social Agents: Contextual Affective Perception Matters}, journal = {Frontiers in Robotics and AI}, volume = {9}, year = {2022}, month = {09/2022}, pages = {pp. 1 - 24}, publisher = {Frontiers in Robotics and AI}, type = {Original Research Article}, doi = {10.3389/frobt.2022.699573}, url = {https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2022.699573 }, author = {Imran Khan and Ca{\~n}amero, L.} } @inproceedings {2021, title = {Adaptation-By-Proxy: Contagion Effect of Social Buffering in an Artificial Society}, booktitle = {ALIFE 2021: The 2021 Conference on Artificial Life}, year = {2021}, note = {Download (Open Access) }, month = {07/2021}, publisher = {The MIT Press}, organization = {The MIT Press}, abstract = {The {\textquotedblleft}social buffering{\textquotedblright} phenomenon proposes that social support facilitates wellbeing by reducing stress in a number of different ways. While this phenomenon may benefit agents with social support from others, its potential effects on the wider social group are less clear. Using a biologically-inspired artificial life model, we have investigated how some of the hypothesised hormonal mechanisms that underpin the {\textquotedblleft}social buffering{\textquotedblright} phenomenon affect the wellbeing and interactions of agents without social support across numerous social and physical contexts. We tested these effects in a small, rank-based society, with half of the agents endowed with numerous hormonal mechanisms associated with {\textquotedblleft}social buffering{\textquotedblright}, and half without. Surprisingly, our results found that these {\textquotedblleft}social buffering{\textquotedblright} mechanisms provided survival-related advantages to agents without social support across numerous conditions. We found that agents with socially-adaptive mechanisms themselves become a proxy for adaptation, and suggest that, in some (artificial) societies, {\textquotedblleft}social buffering{\textquotedblright} may be a contagious phenomenon.}, doi = {10.1162/isal_a_00424}, url = {https://direct.mit.edu/isal/proceedings/isal/90/102917}, author = {Imran Khan and Lola Ca{\~n}amero} } @inproceedings {9998, title = {Modelling the Social Buffering Hypothesis in an Artificial Life Environment}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Artificial Life Conference 2020 (ALIFE 2020)}, year = {2020}, note = {Download (Open Access)}, month = {07/2020}, pages = {393{\textendash}401}, publisher = {MIT Press}, organization = {MIT Press}, address = {Montreal, Canada}, abstract = {In social species, individuals who form social bonds have been found to live longer, healthier lives. One hypothesised reason for this effect is that social support, mediated by oxytocin, "buffers" responses to stress in a number of ways, and is considered an important process of adaptation that facilitates long-term wellbeing in changing, stressful conditions. Using an artificial life model, we have investigated the role of one hypothesised stress-reducing effect of social support on the survival and social interactions of agents in a small society. We have investigated this effect using different types of social bonds and bond partner combinations across environmentally-challenging conditions. Our results have found that stress reduction through social support benefits the survival of agents with social bonds, and that this effect often extends to the wider society. We have also found that this effect is significantly affected by environmental and social contexts. Our findings suggest that these "social buffering" effects may not be universal, but dependent upon the degree of environmental challenges, the quality of affective relationships and the wider social context.}, doi = {10.1162/isal_a_00302}, url = {https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/isal_a_00302}, author = {Imran Khan and Lewis, Matthew and Lola Ca{\~n}amero}, editor = {Josh Bongard and Juniper Lovato and Laurent Hebert-Dufr{\'e}sne and Radhakrishna Dasari and Lisa Soros} } @inproceedings {2019, title = {The Effects of Affective Social Bonds on the Interactions and Survival of Simulated Agents}, booktitle = {ACII2019 Workshop on Social Emotions, Theories and Models (SE-THEMO)}, year = {2019}, note = {Download (or Download accepted version)}, month = {09/2019}, pages = {374{\textendash}380}, address = {Cambridge, UK}, abstract = {The formation and maintenance of affective social bonds plays a key role in the well-being of social agents. Oxytocin has been correlated with social partner preference, and it is hypothesised to influence prosocial behaviours. In this paper, we investigate the effects of modulating the preference of affective social bond partners through oxytocin during decisions related to food-sharing and grooming, in a society of simulated agents with different dominance ranks. Our results show survival benefits for agents with affective social bonds across a number of groups with different bond combinations. We observe a number of emergent social behaviours and suggest that our results bear some similarity with behaviors observed in biological agents.}, doi = {10.1109/ACIIW.2019.8925031}, url = {https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8925031}, author = {Imran Khan and Lewis, Matthew and Lola Ca{\~n}amero} } @inproceedings {9998, title = {Adaptation and the Social Salience Hypothesis of Oxytocin: Early Experiments in a Simulated Agent Environment}, booktitle = {Proc. 2nd Symposium on Social Interactions in Complex Intelligent Systems (SICIS)}, series = {Proc. 2018 Convention of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB 2018)}, year = {2018}, note = {Download full proceedings (PDF)}, month = {04/2018}, pages = {2{\textendash}9}, address = {Liverpool, UK}, abstract = {Allostasis is a mechanism that permits adaptation of an organism as a response to changing (physical or social) environmental conditions. Allostasis is driven by a number of factors, including regulation through hormonal mechanisms. Oxytocin (OT) is a hormone that has been found to play a role in regulating social behaviours and adaptation. However, the concrete effects that OT promotes remain unclear and controversial. One of these effects is on the attention paid to social cues (social salience). Two opposing hypotheses have been proposed. One hypothesis is that adaptation is achieved by increasing attention to social cues (increasing social salience), the other that adaptation is achieved by decreasing attention to social cues (decreasing social salience). In this paper, we present agent simulation experiments that test these two contrasting hypotheses under different environmental conditions related to food availability: a comfortable environment, a challenging environment, and a very challenging environment. Our results show that, for the particular conditions modelled, increased social salience through the release of simulated oxytocin presents significant advantages in the challenging conditions.}, url = {http://aisb2018.csc.liv.ac.uk/PROCEEDINGS\%20AISB2018/Social\%20Interactions\%20in\%20Complex\%20Intelligent\%20Systems\%20(SICIS)\%20-\%20AISB2018.pdf}, author = {Imran Khan and Lewis, Matthew and Lola Ca{\~n}amero} } @article {2018, title = {Modelling Adaptation through Social Allostasis: Modulating the Effects of Social Touch with Oxytocin in Embodied Agents}, journal = {Multimodal Technologies and Interaction}, volume = {2}, year = {2018}, note = {Download (Open Access)}, publisher = {MDPI}, chapter = {67}, address = {Basel, Switzerland}, abstract = {Social allostasis is a mechanism of adaptation that permits individuals to dynamically adapt their physiology to changing physical and social conditions. Oxytocin (OT) is widely considered to be one of the hormones that drives and adapts social behaviours. While its precise effects remain unclear, two areas where OT may promote adaptation are by affecting social salience, and affecting internal responses of performing social behaviours. Working towards a model of dynamic adaptation through social allostasis in simulated embodied agents, and extending our previous work studying OT-inspired modulation of social salience, we present a model and experiments that investigate the effects and adaptive value of allostatic processes based on hormonal (OT) modulation of affective elements of a social behaviour. In particular, we investigate and test the effects and adaptive value of modulating the degree of satisfaction of tactile contact in a social motivation context in a small simulated agent society across different environmental challenges (related to availability of food) and effects of OT modulation of social salience as a motivational incentive. Our results show that the effects of these modulatory mechanisms have different (positive or negative) adaptive value across different groups and under different environmental circumstance in a way that supports the context-dependent nature of OT, put forward by the interactionist approach to OT modulation in biological agents. In terms of simulation models, this means that OT modulation of the mechanisms that we have described should be context-dependent in order to maximise viability of our socially adaptive agents, illustrating the relevance of social allostasis mechanisms.}, issn = {2414-4088}, doi = {10.3390/mti2040067}, url = {https://www.mdpi.com/2414-4088/2/4/67}, author = {Imran Khan and Lola Ca{\~n}amero} }