Dominik Künkele


2025

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Learning to Refer: How Scene Complexity Affects Emergent Communication in Neural Agents
Dominik Künkele | Simon Dobnik
Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Computational Semantics

We explore how neural network-based agents learn to map continuous sensory input to discrete linguistic symbols through interactive language games. One agent describes objects in 3D scenes using invented vocabulary; the other interprets references based on attributes like shape, color, and size. Learning is guided by feedback from successful interactions. We extend the CLEVR dataset with more complex scenes to study how increased referential complexity impacts language acquisition and symbol grounding in artificial agents.