Autonomy and Coordination: Controlling External Influences on Decision Making

In order to achieve optimal results, an agent´s way of decision making might need to change according to the circumstances. One of the aspects an agent can adapt is the way it processes external events. Therewith it controls to what extend it is being influenced by external factors. We argue that influence control is a form of metareasoning. In this paper, we propose a model for metareasoning that allows the agent to select and prioritize heuristics for event processing. The model includes a performance measure based on goal achievement, a selection mechanism to select desired attitude and a control mechanism to adapt its attitude. We describe how to specify these components and we discuss the agent´s performance in a scenario involving coordination.