The Efficiency Attenuation Phenomenon: A Computational Challenge to the Language of Thought Hypothesis

Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence [Submitted on 19 Mar 2026] The Efficiency Attenuation Phenomenon: A Computational Challenge to the Language of Thought Hypothesis Di Zhang This paper computationally investigates whether thought requires a language-like format, as posited by the Language of Thought (LoT) hypothesis. We introduce the ``AI Private Language'' thought experiment: if two artificial agents develop an efficient, inscrutable communication protocol via multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), and their performance declines when forced to use a human-comprehensible language, this Efficiency Attenuation Phenomenon (EAP) challenges the LoT. We formalize this in a cooperative navigation task under partial observability. Results show that agents with an emergent protocol achieve 50.5\% higher efficiency than those using a pre-defined, human-like symbolic protocol, confirming the EAP. This suggests optimal collaborative cognition in these systems is not mediated by symbolic structures but is naturally coupled with sub-symbolic computations. The work bridges philosophy, cognitive science, and AI, arguing for pluralism in cognitive architectures and highlighting implications for AI ethics. Comments: 11 pages Subjects: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Computation and Language (cs.CL); Machine Learning (cs.LG) MSC classes: 68T05 ACM classes: I.2.6; I.2.11; I.2.0 Cite as: arXiv:2603.22312 [cs.AI]   (or arXiv:2603.22312v1 [cs.AI] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.22312 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Di Zhang [view email] [v1] Thu, 19 Mar 2026 23:49:15 UTC (2,350 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.AI < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-03 Change to browse by: cs cs.CL cs.LG References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)