Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography

Rhythm is common in courtship signals of many species. Here we explore whether regularly repeating rhythmic patterns can serve as indicators of underlying mate quality. We find through simulation that rhythmic signals allow the greatest discrimination between high- and low-quality males when low quality is associated with timing errors in artificial songs. However, rhythmic signals are difficult to evolve in our framework, leading to the conclusion that other pressures may have been involved in their appearance.

Evolutionary computing is a powerful tool for studying the origins and evolution of music. In this case, music is studied as an adaptive complex dynamic system and its origins and evolution are studied in the context of the cultural conventions that may emerge under a number of constraints (e.g. psychological, physiological and ecological). This paper introduces three case studies of evolutionary modelling of music. It begins with a model for studying the role of mating-selective pressure in the evolution of musical taste. Here the agents evolve ``courting tunes'' in a society of ``male'' composers and ``female'' critics. Next, a mimetic model is introduced to study the evolution of musical expectation in a community of autonomous agents furnished with a vocal synthesizer, a hearing system and memory. Finally, an iterated learning model is proposed for studying the evolution of compositional grammars. In this case, the agents evolve grammars for composing music to express a set of emotions.

Communication signals in many animal species (including humans) show a surprising amount of variety both across time and at any one instant in a population. Traditional accounts and simulation models of the evolution of communication offer little explanation of this diversity. Sexual selection of signals used to attract mates, and the coevolving preferences used to judge those signals, can instead provide a convincing mechanism. Here we demonstrate that a wide variety of ``songs'' can evolve when male organisms sing their songs to females who judge each male's output and decide whether or not to mate with him based on their own coevolved aesthetics. Evolved variety and rate of innovation are greatest when females combine inherited song preferences with a desire to be surprised. If females choose mates from a small pool of candidates, diversity and rate of change are also increased. Such diversity of communication signals may have implications for the evolution of brains as well.