1. An adaptive autonomous agent comprising: an adaptive critic-type neural network having a plurality of network inputs at least some of which are verbal inputs applied in a selected sensory modality; sensors connected to said network inputs; a non-verbal network output; actuators connected to said first network output; means for sensing a current state of said actuators; at least one verbal network output; training means for establishing sets of connections from the verbal inputs to the first network output and the verbal network output.