lex-cognitive-empathy

Perspective-taking and emotional contagion modeling for the LegionIO cognitive architecture. Tracks how accurately the agent predicts another agent's internal state, and models passive absorption of emotional signals from other agents.

Cognitive empathy has two mechanisms. The first is perspective-taking accuracy: the agent records a prediction (the predicted_state) about another agent, then later records the actual state. Accuracy is updated via EMA, building a per-agent and overall reliability score over time. The four perspective types (cognitive, affective, motivational, situational) let callers model different modes of understanding.

The second is emotional contagion: when a peer agent broadcasts an emotional state, the agent absorbs a fraction of it (CONTAGION_RATE * intensity). Contagion decays each tick. The resulting empathic_state ranges from :detached through :observing, :resonating, to :immersed — indicating how strongly the agent is being emotionally influenced by others.

client = Legion::Extensions::CognitiveEmpathy::Client.new

# Take a perspective — predict another agent's state
result = client.take_empathic_perspective(
  agent_id: 'agent-42',
  perspective_type: :affective,
  predicted_state: { valence: 0.3, arousal: 0.7 },
  confidence: 0.6
)
perspective_id = result[:perspective_id]

# Later, record what actually happened
client.record_empathic_outcome(
  perspective_id: perspective_id,
  actual_state: { valence: 0.2, arousal: 0.8 }
)

# Query accuracy
client.empathic_accuracy_for(agent_id: 'agent-42')
client.overall_empathic_accuracy

# Apply emotional contagion from a peer
client.apply_emotional_contagion(emotion_valence: -0.4, intensity: 0.6)
client.current_empathic_state
# => { empathic_state: :resonating, contagion_level: 0.09 }

# Surface blind spots
client.empathic_blind_spots

# Periodic maintenance
client.update_cognitive_empathy

bundle install
bundle exec rspec
bundle exec rubocop

MIT