# Enhancing Text-based Reinforcement Learning Agents with Commonsense Knowledge

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.00811 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.00811/

## Key facts

- Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 2 May 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [ScienceWorld: Is your Agent Smarter than a 5th Grader?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.07540/) (2022)
- [Aligning to Social Norms and Values in Interactive Narratives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.01975/) (2022)
- [Learning Knowledge Graph-based World Models of Textual Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09608/) (2021)
- [A Systematic Survey of Text Worlds as Embodied Natural Language Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.04132/) (2021)
- [Inherently Explainable Reinforcement Learning in Natural Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08907/) (2021)
- [A Survey of Text Games for Reinforcement Learning informed by Natural Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.09478/) (2021)
- [Modeling Worlds in Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09578/) (2021)
- [Generalization in Text-based Games via Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.09968/) (2021)
- [Situated Dialogue Learning through Procedural Environment Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.03262/) (2021)
- [Case-based Reasoning for Better Generalization in Textual Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08470/) (2021)
- [A Generalist Hanabi Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14555/) (2025)
- [Situated Language Learning via Interactive Narratives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.09977/) (2021)
- [A Mixture-of-Experts Approach to Few-Shot Task Transfer in Open-Ended Text Worlds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.06059/) (2024)
- [Affordance Extraction with an External Knowledge Database for Text-Based Simulated Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.00265/) (2022)
- [An Analysis of Deep Reinforcement Learning Agents for Text-based Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.04105/) (2022)
- [Constructing Temporal Dynamic Knowledge Graphs from Interactive Text-based Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01928/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper, we consider the recent trend of evaluating progress on reinforcement learning technology by using text-based environments and games as evaluation environments. This reliance on text brings advances in natural language processing into the ambit of these agents, with a recurring thread being the use of external knowledge to mimic and better human-level performance. We present one such instantiation of agents that use commonsense knowledge from ConceptNet to show promising performance on two text-based environments.