Cognitive Social Frames: The role of Social Context in agents cognition

Abstract: As social beings, we interact daily with a wide variety of people in distinct environments. As our relationship to the reality surrounding us changes, our behavior adapts accordingly. One aspect of this reality that drives our actions is our connection to other social actors around us. In addition to our physical environment, we also assign a social dimension to it, leading to what we define as Social Context. In an attempt to mimic human's capability to adapt to different Social Contexts, we propose a mechanism that endows autonomous agents the ability to adjust their cognitive processes to fit their reality. We introduce the concept of Cognitive Social Frames that allows the adaptation of the agent's cognition based on its Social Context. The model proposed was designed as an extension to other decision-making architectures rather than as a replacement. This document describes a conceptual model that supports our proposal, in an endeavor to include pro-social agents in our day-to-day interactions.