title: Emotions are emergent processes: they require a dynamic computational architecture.
abstract: Emotion is a cultural and psychobiological adaptation mechanism which allows each individual to react flexibly and dynamically to environmental contingencies. From this claim flows a description of the elements theoretically needed to construct a virtual agent with the ability to display human-like emotions and to respond appropriately to human emotional expression. This article offers a brief survey of the desirable features of emotion theories that make them ideal blueprints for agent models. In particular, the component process model of emotion is described, a theory which postulates emotion-antecedent appraisal on different levels of processing that drive response system patterning predictions. In conclusion, investing seriously in emergent computational modelling of emotion using a nonlinear dynamic systems approach is suggested.
authors.affiliation: Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. klaus.scherer@unige.ch
authors.forename: Klaus R
authors.initials: KR
authors.lastname: Scherer
mesh_terms: D001341:Autonomic Nervous System / Q000502:physiology; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009490:Neurosecretory Systems / Q000502:physiology; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D013564:Sympathetic Nervous System / Q000502:physiology