Heuristics as Decision-making Habits of Autonomous Sensorimotor Agents

Human judgement is better described as a heuristic process rather than maximisation of a utility function. Heuristics are high cognitive processes of decision-making whose rapid and effortless implementation is useful to confront risk scenarios that compromise the viability of an individual. They can be defined in an enactive frame as self-sustained and self-generated habits of abductive behaviour selection in sensorimotor agents influenced by the individual history of sensorimotor contingencies and the environment. In this work, we analyse the emergence of patterns of behaviour and its necessary ecological conditions when performed decisions are related to energy intake and energy expenditure. Agent's sensors and intentions are coupled to a variation of the iterant deformable sensorimotor medium (IDSM) (Egbert and Barandiaran, 2014). This model explains transparently the generation of sensorimotor habits in simulated robots through the influence of registers of previously executed behaviours reinforced by repetition. We create a decision-making frame based on intentions as probabilities of specific actions which constitute the motor component of sensorimotor states on IDSM. In this model is seen that specific behaviour correlations with the lifespan of agents depend on the availability of energetic sources on the environment. Inheritance of the medium is introduced in agents with a small improvement on the lifespan of agents.