Agents for educational games and simulations

This book consists mainly of revised papers that were presented at the Agents for Educational Games and Simulation (AEGS) workshop held on May 2, 2011, as part of the Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS) conference in Taipei, Taiwan. The 12 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers are organized topical sections on middleware applications, dialogues and learning, adaption and convergence, and agent applications

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

Empathy. A Schelerian Perspective in the Contemporary Debate

The aim of this dissertation is to reassess empathy from a Schelerian perspective, taking into consideration and keeping abreast with contemporary debates on the matter. Although Scheler\u2019s best-known books (GW II, GW VII) are being widely examined in the current phenomenological discussions on empathy and we-intentionality, the complex view that emerges from his texts of different periods is still largely overlooked by current phenomenological discussions. My studies show that a clarification of the problematic concept of empathy can be better achieved by adopting adequate Schelerian instruments, so they have been applied when investigating the relations of empathy with the phenomena of body schema, expressivity and we-intentionality. Firstly, as Scheler grounds other-perception on the expressive possibilities of the lived body, I delve into the concept of body schema, which has been scarcely studied in Schelerian terms so far. After examining the interdisciplinary literature on the topic, I highlight the viewpoint which stems from Die Idole der Selbsterkenntnis and Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos, since it lets us understand the body schema both as a pre-reflective dynamic structure allowing fluid interactions with the world, and as the first level of individuation. Moreover, I study two examples from the Formalismus \u2013 the \u201cjail example\u201d and the \u201cexample of the new-born\u201d \u2013 and, to indicate an early distinction between the body schema and the body image, I compare the first case with the experience of solitary confinement and the second with up-to-date evidence from infant research. Through this inquiry, I draw attention to the body schema as the minimal form of self-individuation necessary for ordinary experience, and as a space between self and others which both allows empathy and is shaped by it. Secondly, by shedding light on the interrelational aspect of the body schema, I argue that others highly contribute to its development, and interactions themselves depend on bodily expressivity and affective exchange. Infant research shows the newborn\u2019s early \u2013 if not innate \u2013 acquaintance with the implicit grasping of the affective meaning of some expressions, which can be compared with Scheler\u2019s thesis of a universal grammar of expressivity. To ascertain how universal this grammar is to be conceived, I carry out an analysis of Darwin\u2019s and Ekman\u2019s accounts, and of the counterarguments to the universality of any expression. I dismiss such objections, state that a difference exists between universal spontaneous expressions and gestures, and claim that the universality of certain emotions extends beyond the visibility and expression of them (e.g. jealousy). This is followed by the claim that what is called the \u201cdirect perception\u201d in the contemporary debate implies an axiological dimension for Scheler, a theory of values which gives a further nuance to the non-neutrality of perception. If we did not access expressivity and values directly, but through explicit attention and reasoning, our perception would become solipsistic and similar to schizophrenic autism. Thirdly, the inquiry into the roots of empathy (the lived body and expressivity), is followed by the study of the very concept of empathy. In order to reassess how Scheler can help define the difference between similar phenomena, his theory is compared to what is being discussed in current interdisciplinary debates. Although Scheler locates unipathy at the foundational level for empathy, I counter the view that sees the acquisition of an affective state as a requirement for empathy, for Scheler\u2019s Nachf\ufchlen presupposes detachment and awareness of the feeling pertaining to the other agent. Moreover, such a thesis does not fall into the solipsistic problems of the theory theory and the simulation theory; in particular, a focus on the latter points out that it causes egocentrism on the ethical level, and that even the embodied simulation \u2013 which states that empathy is bodily grounded \u2013 leads to multiple theoretical impasses. The final section deals with the question whether empathy or \u201csharing\u201d is primary, and the attempt to understand the connections between the two. I take sharing to have a broader meaning than we-intentionality, and to start already from what Scheler calls \u201csharing without awareness\u201d in unipathy and affective contagion. In this regard, the comparison with the theory of extended emotions can help understand that affects are not actually locked in the bodily dimension. Scheler\u2019s hotly-debated example of the grieving parents and the four group-forms that he lists are taken into account to prove that empathy can have a genetic role for we-intentionality, but not always a constitutive one. The highest degree of interconnection (solidarity and absolute responsibility) also corresponds to the highest individuation (the person). Lastly, I argue that the \u201cco-execution\u201d (Mitvollzug) of personal acts (GW II; Cusinato 2015b, 50; 2017, 48) represents a unique kind of sharing, and read it as the ethical direction that is essentially absent in empathy, although sharing becomes possible thanks to the non-solipsistic roots examined at the beginning of the dissertation

Enkinaesthetic polyphony: the underpinning for first-order languaging

We contest two claims: (1) that language, understood as the processing of abstract symbolic forms, is an instrument of cognition and rational thought, and (2) that conventional notions of turn-taking, exchange structure, and move analysis, are satisfactory as a basis for theorizing communication between living, feeling agents. We offer an enkinaesthetic theory describing the reciprocal affective neuro-muscular dynamical flows and tensions of co- agential dialogical sense-making relations. This “enkinaesthetic dialogue” is characterised by a preconceptual experientially recursive temporal dynamics forming the deep extended melodies of relationships in time. An understanding of how those relationships work, when we understand and are ourselves understood, when communication falters and conflict arises, will depend on a grasp of our enkinaesthetic intersubjectivity

Pointing as an Instrumental Gesture : Gaze Representation Through Indication

The research of the first author was supported by a Fulbright Visiting Scholar Fellowship and developed in 2012 during a period of research visit at the University of Memphis.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Imitation, mirror neurons and autism

Various deficits in the cognitive functioning of people with autism have been documented in recent years but these provide only partial explanations for the condition. We focus instead on an imitative disturbance involving difficulties both in copying actions and in inhibiting more stereotyped mimicking, such as echolalia. A candidate for the neural basis of this disturbance may be found in a recently discovered class of neurons in frontal cortex, 'mirror neurons' (MNs). These neurons show activity in relation both to specific actions performed by self and matching actions performed by others, providing a potential bridge between minds. MN systems exist in primates without imitative and ‘theory of mind’ abilities and we suggest that in order for them to have become utilized to perform social cognitive functions, sophisticated cortical neuronal systems have evolved in which MNs function as key elements. Early developmental failures of MN systems are likely to result in a consequent cascade of developmental impairments characterised by the clinical syndrome of autism

Face and Body gesture recognition for a vision-based multimodal analyser

users, computers should be able to recognize emotions, by analyzing the human's affective state, physiology and behavior. In this paper, we present a survey of research conducted on face and body gesture and recognition. In order to make human-computer interfaces truly natural, we need to develop technology that tracks human movement, body behavior and facial expression, and interprets these movements in an affective way. Accordingly in this paper, we present a framework for a vision-based multimodal analyzer that combines face and body gesture and further discuss relevant issues