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This paper explores the trade-off between memory retention and peer communication in bounded agents, defining the "remembering-signaling frontier" that characterizes optimal information allocation under resource constraints. The authors hypothesize that agents achieving greater loss reduction from memory will rely less on peer communication, a prediction tested through preliminary referential games. Results indicate that effective memory use leads to shorter, more efficient communication, particularly when task conditions favor memory over peer input.
Agents can significantly reduce communication needs by leveraging memory more effectively, revealing a critical balance between remembering and signaling.
A bounded agent may obtain information for a decision from its own past, from peers, or from both sources. Retaining task-relevant history can reduce later communication, while a peer message can supply what memory lacks. Under limits on both resources, how should an agent allocate its information budget? Given a fixed task and decision rule, the memory and message rate pairs attaining a performance threshold form an achievable region under specified rules for using history and peer observations. We call its efficient boundary the remembering--signaling frontier. Across conditions where history permits the same maximum reduction in task loss, we hypothesize that a bounded agent will need less peer communication when it obtains a larger loss reduction from history. In preliminary referential games, target repetition coincided with shorter successful messages, while predictability from a hidden cyclic rule did not shorten them. Experiments varying memory and message rates can estimate the frontier and test this prediction across cooperative tasks.
