# Developmentally motivated emergence of compositional communication via template transfer

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.06079 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.06079/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 4 Oct 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [A Review of the Applications of Deep Learning-Based Emergent Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03302/) (2024)
- [Towards More Human-like AI Communication: A Review of Emergent Communication Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.02541/) (2023)
- [Catalytic Role Of Noise And Necessity Of Inductive Biases In The Emergence Of Compositional Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06464/) (2021)
- [The Five Ws of Multi-Agent Communication: Who Talks to Whom, When, What, and Why -- A Survey from MARL to Emergent Language and LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.11583/) (2026)
- [Visual Referential Games Further the Emergence of Disentangled Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14511/) (2023)
- [Recommendations for Systematic Research on Emergent Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.11302/) (2022)
- [Meta-Referential Games to Learn Compositional Learning Behaviours](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.08012/) (2022)
- [ETHER: Aligning Emergent Communication for Hindsight Experience Replay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15494/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper explores a novel approach to achieving emergent compositional communication in multi-agent systems. We propose a training regime implementing template transfer, the idea of carrying over learned biases across contexts. In our method, a sender-receiver pair is first trained with disentangled loss functions and then the receiver is transferred to train a new sender with a standard loss. Unlike other methods (e.g. the obverter algorithm), our approach does not require imposing inductive biases on the architecture of the agents. We experimentally show the emergence of compositional communication using topographical similarity, zero-shot generalization and context independence as evaluation metrics. The presented approach is connected to an important line of work in semiotics and developmental psycholinguistics: it supports a conjecture that compositional communication is scaffolded on simpler communication protocols.