Project PRAIA: Pedagogical Rational and Affective Intelligent Agents

ISBN: 978-85-7669-245-4International audienceno abstrac

Inferring Peer-Related Emotions in a Collaborative Learning Game

Este artigo apresenta um modelo afetivo para inferir emoções do aluno em um jogo de aprendizagem colaborativa. O modelo é focado na representação e reconhecimento de emoções vinculadas a uma dinâmica de colaboração (tais como orgulho, vergonha, admiração e reprovação). O modelo emprega uma abordagem cognitiva em que as emoções do aluno são representadas e inferidas pela representação da avaliação cognitiva que o aluno faz sobre a “louvabilidade” das interações colaborativas durante o jogo, de acordo com suas expectativas de padrões comportamentais. O modelo afetivo do aluno se apóia em Redes Bayesianas, através das quais são mapeadas dependências causais entre traços da personalidade, objetivos, padrões comportamentais, interações e emoções do aluno. Um jogo colaborativo que suporta mecanismos simples de interação foi implementado como protótipo de teste. Ao fazer uso deste jogo, alunos podem construir soluções compartilhadas de uma classe de problemas lógicos. As variáveis afetivas e cognitivas do modelo e suas relações probabilísticas são detalhadas e a captura de evidências da interação a partir do jogo protótipo é discutida

Exploring the Affective Loop

Research in psychology and neurology shows that both body and mind are involved when experiencing emotions (Damasio 1994, Davidson et al. 2003). People are also very physical when they try to communicate their emotions. Somewhere in between beings consciously and unconsciously aware of it ourselves, we produce both verbal and physical signs to make other people understand how we feel. Simultaneously, this production of signs involves us in a stronger personal experience of the emotions we express. Emotions are also communicated in the digital world, but there is little focus on users' personal as well as physical experience of emotions in the available digital media. In order to explore whether and how we can expand existing media, we have designed, implemented and evaluated /eMoto/, a mobile service for sending affective messages to others. With eMoto, we explicitly aim to address both cognitive and physical experiences of human emotions. Through combining affective gestures for input with affective expressions that make use of colors, shapes and animations for the background of messages, the interaction "pulls" the user into an /affective loop/. In this thesis we define what we mean by affective loop and present a user-centered design approach expressed through four design principles inspired by previous work within Human Computer Interaction (HCI) but adjusted to our purposes; /embodiment/ (Dourish 2001) as a means to address how people communicate emotions in real life, /flow/ (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) to reach a state of involvement that goes further than the current context, /ambiguity/ of the designed expressions (Gaver et al. 2003) to allow for open-ended interpretation by the end-users instead of simplistic, one-emotion one-expression pairs and /natural but designed expressions/ to address people's natural couplings between cognitively and physically experienced emotions. We also present results from an end-user study of eMoto that indicates that subjects got both physically and emotionally involved in the interaction and that the designed "openness" and ambiguity of the expressions, was appreciated and understood by our subjects. Through the user study, we identified four potential design problems that have to be tackled in order to achieve an affective loop effect; the extent to which users' /feel in control/ of the interaction, /harmony and coherence/ between cognitive and physical expressions/,/ /timing/ of expressions and feedback in a communicational setting, and effects of users' /personality/ on their emotional expressions and experiences of the interaction

Architecture for animation of affective behaviors in pedagogical agents

This article introduces an open-source module responsible for the presentation of verbal (speech) and corporal (animation) behaviors of animated pedagogical agents. This module can be inserted into any learning environment regardless of application domain and platform, being executable under different operating systems. It was implemented in Java as a reactive agent (named Body agent) that communicates with the agent’s Mind through a language known as FIPA-ACL. Therefore, it may be inserted into any intelligent learning environment that is also capable to communicate using FIPA-ACL. Persistence of information is ensured by XML files, increasing the agent’s portability. The agent also includes a mechanism for automatically updating new behaviors and characters once available in the server. A simulation environment was conceived to test the proposed agent

Diseñar a partir de emociones: evaluación de un método y dos herramientas para lograrlo

Este artículo reporta los resultados del proceso de evaluación de un método proyectual que tiene como objetivo apoyar a estudiantes para que diseñen a partir de emociones predeterminadas. El método se apoya en dos herramientas que entregan conocimiento detallado de emociones particulares. Dichas herramientas se estructuran a partir de la teoría cognitiva de las emociones, la que afirma que estas son provocadas por la valoración de eventos y situaciones. Para cumplir el objetivo de este estudio, 54 estudiantes de diseño implementaron el método y sus herramientas. Dicho método fue evaluado a través de un enfoque mixto de investigación, esto es, a través de datos cualitativos y cuantitativos. Los resultados indican que el método y las herramientas son útiles para que los estudiantes completen una tarea de diseño a partir de emociones predeterminadas. Los participantes informaron que el proceso y las herramientas utilizadas repercutieron en la forma en que generan ideas, en la manera de diseñar (apoyándose en conocimiento científico) y en su propia comprensión de la dimensión emocional que subyace en la interacción persona-objeto

Designing Embodied Interactive Software Agents for E-Learning: Principles, Components, and Roles

Embodied interactive software agents are complex autonomous, adaptive, and social software systems with a digital embodiment that enables them to act on and react to other entities (users, objects, and other agents) in their environment through bodily actions, which include the use of verbal and non-verbal communicative behaviors in face-to-face interactions with the user. These agents have been developed for various roles in different application domains, in which they perform tasks that have been assigned to them by their developers or delegated to them by their users or by other agents. In computer-assisted learning, embodied interactive pedagogical software agents have the general task to promote human learning by working with students (and other agents) in computer-based learning environments, among them e-learning platforms based on Internet technologies, such as the Virtual Linguistics Campus (www.linguistics-online.com). In these environments, pedagogical agents provide contextualized, qualified, personalized, and timely assistance, cooperation, instruction, motivation, and services for both individual learners and groups of learners. This thesis develops a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and user-oriented view of the design of embodied interactive pedagogical software agents, which integrates theoretical and practical insights from various academic and other fields. The research intends to contribute to the scientific understanding of issues, methods, theories, and technologies that are involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation of embodied interactive software agents for different roles in e-learning and other areas. For developers, the thesis provides sixteen basic principles (Added Value, Perceptible Qualities, Balanced Design, Coherence, Consistency, Completeness, Comprehensibility, Individuality, Variability, Communicative Ability, Modularity, Teamwork, Participatory Design, Role Awareness, Cultural Awareness, and Relationship Building) plus a large number of specific guidelines for the design of embodied interactive software agents and their components. Furthermore, it offers critical reviews of theories, concepts, approaches, and technologies from different areas and disciplines that are relevant to agent design. Finally, it discusses three pedagogical agent roles (virtual native speaker, coach, and peer) in the scenario of the linguistic fieldwork classes on the Virtual Linguistics Campus and presents detailed considerations for the design of an agent for one of these roles (the virtual native speaker)