Abstract

The Lewis-Skyrms signaling game provides an effective explanation of how signals, as primitive linguistic elements, can emerge. In the standard signaling game model, both sender and receiver recognize a shared set of signals and gradually establish associations between signals, states, and behaviors through repeated interactions. Herrmann and VanDrunen (2025) challenge the assumption that the receiver can always correctly identify signals and propose the “attention game” to model how receivers learn to allocate attention properly in order to identify signals. Building on this framework, this paper further explores signaling games based on biological attention mechanisms. It examines how asymmetries—stemming from uneven attention allocation and differences in the transmission success rate of signal features—impact signaling outcomes. This study aims to show how attention mechanisms facilitate signal selection and how such selection processes improve the efficiency and robustness of communication.