Cognitive Science and Cognitive Psychology Report on Multi-Agent Cooperative Behavior

Cognitive Science and Cognitive Psychology Report on Multi-Agent Cooperative Behavior Based on a Grid Resource Competition Game: Strategy Emergence and Altruistic Behavior Abstract This study investigates the emergent individual strategies and group cooperative behaviors of intelligent agents controlled by spiking neural networks in a two-team grid resource competition game. Under team-based selection pressure, agents learn to flexibly select among four strategies—attack, track, explore, and avoid—based on environmental states (resource energy distribution, enemy positions, self-energy). Remarkably, without any explicit cooperation reward, agents spontaneously exhibit altruistic rescue behavior: abandoning high-value resource points to attack enemies that are flanking a teammate, preferentially targeting lower-energy opponents. From a cognitive science perspective, this phenomenon parallels risk-sharing and indirect reciprocity in animal societies. The underlying mechanism can be inter