A Variational Approach to Scripts

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Mahault Albarracin¹  Axel Constant²  Karl J. Friston³  Maxwell James D. Ramstead² 

[1] Département d’informatique Cognitive, Université du Québec à Montréal;Division of Social Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University;Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, University College London, United Kingdom

关键词: script theory;    social scripts;    variational free-energy principle;    active inference;    Bayesian reasoning;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2021.585493

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

This paper proposes a formal reconstruction of the script construct by leveraging the active inference framework, a behavioral modeling framework that casts action, perception, emotions, and attention as processes of (Bayesian or variational) inference. We propose a first principles account of the script construct that integrates its different uses in the behavioral and social sciences. We begin by reviewing the recent literature that uses the script construct. We then examine the main mathematical and computational features of active inference. Finally, we leverage the resources of active inference to offer a formal model of scripts. Our integrative model accounts for the dual nature of scripts (as internal, psychological schema used by agents to make sense of event types and as constitutive behavioral categories that make up the social order) and also for the stronger and weaker conceptions of the construct (which do and do not relate to explicit action sequences, respectively).

【 授权许可】

CC BY