A psycho-ethological approach to social signal processing

The emerging field of social signal processing can benefit from a theoretical framework to guide future research activities. The present article aims at drawing attention to two areas of research that devoted considerable efforts to the understanding of social behaviour: ethology and social psychology. With a long tradition in the study of animal signals, ethology and evolutionary biology have developed theoretical concepts to account for the functional significance of signalling. For example, the consideration of divergent selective pressures responsible for the evolution of signalling and social cognition emphasized the importance of two classes of indicators: informative cues and communicative signals. Social psychology, on the other hand, investigates emotional expression and interpersonal relationships, with a focus on the mechanisms underlying the production and interpretation of social signals and cues. Based on the theoretical considerations developed in these two fields, we propose a model that integrates the processing of perceivable individual features (social signals and cues) with contextual information, and we suggest that output of computer-based processing systems should be derived in terms of functional significance rather than in terms of absolute conceptual meanin

Conceptual analysis of social signals: the importance of clarifying terminology

As a burgeoning field, Social Signal Processing (SSP) needs a solid grounding in the disciplines that have developed important concepts in the study of communication. However, the number and diversity of terms developed in linguistics, psychology, and the behavioural sciences may seem confusing for scholars who are not versed in the subtleties of conceptual analysis and theoretical developments. Indeed, different disciplines sometimes use the same term to mean different things or, conversely, use different terms to mean the same thing. The goals of this article are to present an overview of the different concepts developed in the various disciplines that studied animal and human communication, and to understand the differences and commonalities between concepts emerging from these disciplines. We conclude that such an understanding will greatly improve the efficiency of pluridisciplinary research projects, for the advancement of SSP requires that we look at the complexity of communication from different angle

Machine Understanding of Human Behavior

A widely accepted prediction is that computing will move to the background, weaving itself into the fabric of our everyday living spaces and projecting the human user into the foreground. If this prediction is to come true, then next generation computing, which we will call human computing, should be about anticipatory user interfaces that should be human-centered, built for humans based on human models. They should transcend the traditional keyboard and mouse to include natural, human-like interactive functions including understanding and emulating certain human behaviors such as affective and social signaling. This article discusses a number of components of human behavior, how they might be integrated into computers, and how far we are from realizing the front end of human computing, that is, how far are we from enabling computers to understand human behavior

The influence of affective factors on time perception

Several studies have suggested that both affective valence and arousal affect the perception of time. How-ever, in previous experiments these two affective dimensions were not systematically controlled. In the present study, a set of emotional slides rated for valence and arousal (International Affective Picture System) were projected to two groups of subjects for 2, 4 and 6 sec. One group estimated the duration on an analog scale and a second group reproduced the interval by pushing a button. Heart rate and skin conductance responses were also recorded. A highly significant valence by arousal interaction affected duration judg-ments. For low arousal stimuli, the duration of negative slides was judged relatively shorter than the duration of positive slides. For high arousal stimuli, the duration of negative slides was judged longer than the dura-tion of positive slides. These results are interpreted within a model of action tendency, in which the level of arousal controls two different motivational mechanisms, one emotional and the other attentional

Ethological Aspects of Stress in a Model Lizard, Anolis carolinensis

Research on the stress response in reptiles can provide a useful comparative perspective for understanding how the constituent elements of the response can be put into service of diverse behavioral adaptations. A summary of the neural and endocrine causes and consequences of specific behavioral patterns seen in the small diurnal lizard, Anolis carolinensis, has provided a model for the exploration of the dynamics of autonomic and neurohormonal contributions to adaptive behavior. In this species, changes in body color provide indices of the flux of circulating stress relevant hormones, and are seen in situations from spontaneous exploration through agonistic behavior. Furthermore, adult males spontaneously and consistently manifest social dominance relationships in captivity that provide all the elements of a stress mediated adaptive behavioral patterns. These patterns include suppressed reproduction and long-term coping apparently based more on stress-mediated changes in motivation than acquired changes in behavior. For the current version with updated commentary, see https://notes.utk.edu/bio/greenberg.nsf/93c3cdb85c9d4c7d85256876001faff2/16b5f418b10b413f85256a2c0059baf7?OpenDocumen

Psychopathy: A Behavioral Systems Approach

Why do they do that? is the question theories of psychopathy should answer. Current theories of psychopathy fail to answer this question because they focus on affective and inhibitory deficits rather than on motivation. Antisocial behavior is appetitive and therefore can only be explained with a motivational theory. This chapter presents a motivational theory of psychopathy that draws on the ethological framework. The chapter answers all four questions of ethology as applied to psychopathy

Predicting continuous conflict perception with Bayesian Gaussian processes

Conflict is one of the most important phenomena of social life, but it is still largely neglected by the computing community. This work proposes an approach that detects common conversational social signals (loudness, overlapping speech, etc.) and predicts the conflict level perceived by human observers in continuous, non-categorical terms. The proposed regression approach is fully Bayesian and it adopts Automatic Relevance Determination to identify the social signals that influence most the outcome of the prediction. The experiments are performed over the SSPNet Conflict Corpus, a publicly available collection of 1430 clips extracted from televised political debates (roughly 12 hours of material for 138 subjects in total). The results show that it is possible to achieve a correlation close to 0.8 between actual and predicted conflict perception

Darwin's Rainbow: Evolutionary radiation and the spectrum of consciousness

Evolution is littered with paraphyletic convergences: many roads lead to functional Romes. We propose here another example - an equivalence class structure factoring the broad realm of possible realizations of the Baars Global Workspace consciousness model. The construction suggests many different physiological systems can support rapidly shifting, sometimes highly tunable, temporary assemblages of interacting unconscious cognitive modules. The discovery implies various animal taxa exhibiting behaviors we broadly recognize as conscious are, in fact, simply expressing different forms of the same underlying phenomenon. Mathematically, we find much slower, and even multiple simultaneous, versions of the basic structure can operate over very long timescales, a kind of paraconsciousness often ascribed to group phenomena. The variety of possibilities, a veritable rainbow, suggests minds today may be only a small surviving fraction of ancient evolutionary radiations - bush phylogenies of consciousness and paraconsciousness. Under this scenario, the resulting diversity was subsequently pruned by selection and chance extinction. Though few traces of the radiation may be found in the direct fossil record, exaptations and vestiges are scattered across the living mind. Humans, for instance, display an uncommonly profound synergism between individual consciousness and their embedding cultural heritages, enabling efficient Lamarkian adaptation

The attachment control system and computational modeling: Origins and prospects

From his first attempts to explain attachment phenomena in the 1940s through his Attachment and Loss trilogy (Bowlby, 1969/1982, 1973, 1980), John Bowlby reformulated the theoretical underpinnings of attachment theory several times. He initially attempted to explain attachment phenomena in psychoanalytic terms. Then he invoked ethological theory in the explanation of how and why people behave as they do in close personal relationships. The mature theoretical framework that he presented between 1969 and 1982 in the attachment and loss trilogy retained strengths and insights, ultimately situating them within an overarching control systems framework. This article describes key stages in Bowlby's theoretical development, with particular emphasis placed on the emergence of control systems theory as a cornerstone of the mature theory. It also compares Bowlby's control systems approach to contemporary cognitive science approaches. It concludes by suggesting how Bowlby's control systems formulation could evolve along the path opened up by contemporary work in computational modeling and how it could benefit by doing so

Examining affective structure in chickens: valence, intensity, persistence and generalization measured using a conditioned place preference test

When measuring animals’ valenced behavioural responses to stimuli, the Conditioned Place Preference (CPP) test goes a step further than many approach-based and avoidance-based tests by establishing whether a learned preference for, or aversion to, the location in which the stimulus was encountered can be generated. We designed a novel, four-chambered CPP test to extend the capability of the usual CPP paradigm to provide information on four key features of animals’ affective responses: valence, scale, persistence and generalization. Using this test, we investigated the affective responses of domestic chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) to four potentially aversive stimuli: 1. Puffs of air; 2. Sight of (robotic) snake; 3. Sprays of water; 4. Sound of conspecific alarm calls. We found conditioned avoidance of locations associated with the air puffs and water sprays (Friedman’s χ2(3) = 13.323 p > .005; χ2(3) = 14.235 p > .005), but not with the snake and alarm calls. The scale of the learned avoidance was similar for the air puff and water spray stimuli, but persistence and generalization differed. We conclude that the four chambered CPP test can have a valuable role to play in making multi-feature measurements of stimulus-generated affective responses, and we highlight the value of such measurements for improving our understanding of the structure of affect in chickens and other animals