Mental State Recognition from Communication

In order to perform effective communication, agents must be able to foresee the effects of their utterances on the addressee`s mental state. In this paper we study the consequences of an utterance on the mental state of a hearer. Given an agent communication language with a STRIPS-like semantics, we propose a set of criteria that allow the binding of the speaker`s mental state to its uttering of a certain sentence. On the basis of these criteria, we give an abductive procedure that the hearer can adopt to partially recognize the speaker`s mental state that led to aspecific utterance.