TECHNOLOGY AND CODE article
Front. Artif. Intell.
Sec. Medicine and Public Health
Volume 8 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frai.2025.1618678
This article is part of the Research TopicAI and Neuroscience: Integrating Knowledge, Reasoning, and Theory of MindView all 4 articles
Elucidating simulated equivalence responding through dynamic visualisation of structural connectivity and relational density
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
- 2University of Warwick, Coventry, West Midlands, United Kingdom
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This paper presents Affinity, a visual analytics tool that enhances the simulation of the emergence of derived relations between stimuli in humans. Built on the foundations of a reinforcement learning model called Enhanced Equivalence Projective Simulation, Affinity provides both real-time visualisations of the agent's relational memory and enables the simulation of Relational Density Theory, a novel approach to understanding relational responding through the modelling of higher-order properties of density, volume, and mass. We demonstrate these features in a simulation of a recent study into the quantification of relational volume. We also use this as an opportunity to examine the effect of the underlying model's consolidation mechanism, Network Enhancement, on the agent's relational network. Our results highlight Affinity's innovation as an explainable modelling interface for relational formation and a testbed for new experiments.We discuss the limitations of Affinity in its current state, underline future work on the software and computational modelling of Stimulus Equivalence and locate this contribution in the broader scope of integrations of Contextual Behavioural Science and Artificial Intelligence.
Keywords: Stimulus equivalence, Computational modelling, Explainable AI, reinforcement learning, Relational density theory, Relational frame theory
Received: 26 Apr 2025; Accepted: 14 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 O'Sullivan, Ray and Jackson Brown. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: James Henry O'Sullivan, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
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