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behavioral decisions. A low-level signifier is a behavior that is annotated with
the special form (with low_level_signifying...); a high-level signifier is similarly
annotated (with high_level_signifying....). Signifiers can also generate tokens for
the sign-management system, as described below.
Sign management
Once a designer has structured an agent according to what it needs to com-
municate, agents can reason about what has been communicated in order to
fine-tune presentation of subsequent signs and signifiers. That is, by noting
which signifiers have been communicated, agents can reason about the user's
likely current interpretation of their actions and use this as a basis for deciding
how to communicate subsequent activity.
The most obvious way for the agent to keep track of what the user thinks
is for it simply to notice which signs and signifiers are currently running. After
all, signifiers represent what is being communicated to the user. But it turns out
in practice that this is not correct because the user's interpretation of signs and
signifiers lags behind the agent's engagement in them .Forexample,iftheagent
is currently running a “head-banging” signifier, the user will need to see the
agent smack its head a few times before realizing that the agent is doing it.
The sign-management system deals with this problem by having the agent
post signs and signifiers when it believes the user must have seen them. A be-
havior can post a sign each time it has engaged in some physical actions that
express that sign, using the post_sign language mechanism. Similarly, once signs
have been posted that express a low-level signifier, behaviors use post_low_level
to post that that low-level signifier has been successfully expressed. Once the
right low-level signifiers have been posted to express a high-level signifier,
post_high_level is used to post that high-level signifier.
Eachofthesecommandscausesatokentobestoredintheagent'smem-
ory listing the current sign, low-level signifier, or high-level signifier, respec-
tively, along with a time stamp. Once signs and signifiers have been posted,
other behaviors can check to see what has been posted recently before they
decide what to do. The result is that the signs and signifiers the agent has ex-
pressed can be used just like environmental stimuli and internal drives to affect
subsequent behavioral presentation, tuning the agent's behavior to the user's
interpretation.
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