Max van Duijn has been elected chair of The Young Academy (De Jonge Akademie), the platform of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences for researchers in the early stages of their careers. [Read the full announcement here.]
Welcome to the SIM lab. We study social intelligence and behaviour in humans, story characters, and machines. Curious how these elements fit together? See our Projects and Publications pages, or get in touch!
The lab kicked off on May 6, 2025, and is a in some respects a continuation of the Creative Intelligence Lab and the Telling Story Project.
Tom Kouwenhoven and Michiel van der Meer presented “Traces of Social Competence in Large Language Models” at the 30th Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning. [Read the paper here.]
Lennard Froma presented “Seeking Information with RAG-Assistants: Does Model Size Matter in Human-AI Collaborations?” at the Hybrid Human-Artificial Intelligence conference. [Read the paper here.]
Aida Gholami presented “The Architecture of Stickiness: Identity Marking and Narrative Overdetermination in AI-Generated Scenes” at the Computational Models of Narrative. [Read the paper here.]
The SIM Lab helped host the 2026 annual conference of the European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association, held 14-17 April at Het Pesthuis in Leiden. Alongside the regular programme, this year’s edition featured a dedicated [AI]volution theme track exploring what recent developments in AI mean for research across EHBEA’s disciplines — from machine behaviour and cognition to the societal impact of AI — with Iyad Rahwan (Max Planck Institute for Human Development) delivering the track’s keynote.
Dorota Moravčíková has joined the SIM Lab as a research assistant, working on cognitive models for agent-based social simulations. She holds a BSc in Psychology (Cognitive Neuroscience) from Leiden University with a NeuroAI minor, and is currently pursuing a Research Master’s in Cognitive Science at the University of Amsterdam.
Why are we called ‘SIM’ lab? We study social intelligence in human development and evolution, but also in story characters and non-human intelligent systems, including bots and AI-models.
SIM stands for social intelligence modelling, which is reflected in our research using agent-based and classification models.
But it also stands for stories in the mind, reflecting what social cognition in essence is: a form storytelling in which we (silently or out loud) connect visible elements of the social world to invisible ones, such as beliefs, intentions, desires, and emotions. We work with children aged 4-12 to study the link between storytelling and forms of social cognition known as Theory of Mind or Intentional Reasoning. And we train language/AI models using narrative data to study the link between stories and intelligence in a completely novel way.
We also study language/AI models that collaborate with humans on various tasks. Here, SIM refers to simulation: in order to coordinate actions successfully, both sides have to simulate the others’ perspective.
Theory of Mind (ToM) is a skill that is used in both human and AI cognition to infer the mental states of others, and to use these mental states to predict their behaviour in the world. Experts from all over the world joined an AAAI conference workshop in Philadelphia to discuss the benefits and challenges of using ToM in AI systems. The diversity in the field was represented by 4 keynote speakers, 7 spotlight speakers, and 33 poster presentations during a day full of exchanged ideas.
Ramira van der Meulen joined this event as a spotlight speaker, to highlight the misconceptions that exist around implementing ToM in AI. In addition, she presented a poster on how different models of intelligence influence the learning process and knowledge retention of both individual and collectives of AI agents. Overall, it was an inspiring day with many insights on how ToM could be practically useful in AI applications, and we look forward to potential future sessions.
The two presented works can be found as included extended abstracts in the Workshop Proceedings. A longer version of the work on AI-ToM Misconceptions can be found on ArXiv.
Bron: Volkskrant
“Taal- en cognitiespecialist Max van Duin is als wetenschapper altijd op zoek naar meerdere perspectieven, naar logische verhalen. Dat gevoel het soms toch wint van ratio ontdekte hij toen hij botkanker kreeg: ‘Ik maakte een heel onwetenschappelijke keuze.’
Mensen onderscheiden zich van dieren door hun empathisch vermogen. Maar hoe dat inlevingsvermogen zich precies ontwikkelt is nog altijd niet duidelijk. Vanaf jonge leeftijd kunnen kinderen met anderen meevoelen. ‘Maar het duurt nog een hele tijd voordat ze zich echt in anderen kunnen verplaatsen’, weet Max van Duijn (40). Hij doet aan de Universiteit Leiden onderzoek naar inlevingsvermogen, en hoe dat samenhangt met taal en verhalen. Want via verhalen leren we emoties van anderen ‘lezen’. ‘Een van de dingen die ik met mijn studenten doe is naar goede films kijken. Met de vraag: wat maakt een verhaal krachtig, hoe komt het dat je je erin verplaatst?’ Verhalen blijken een belangrijk instrument om ons inlevingsvermogen te ontwikkelen. ‘Wij hebben als mensen niet alleen onze eigen levenservaring als materiaal. Dankzij verhalen hebben wij een hele bibliotheek aan ervaringen tot onze beschikking.’”
Lees het volledige interview op de website van de Volkskrant hier.
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