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Combining cognition and emotion in virtual agents

Joaquín Pérez Marco, Francisco José Serón Arbeloa, Eva Cerezo Bagdasari

Kybernetes

ISSN: 0368-492X

Article publication date: 5 June 2017

435

Abstract

Purpose

The paper aims to explain the limitations of existing cognitive architectures and affective models, and propose a new cognitive-affective architecture that can be integrated in real intelligent agents to make them more realistic and believable.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper evaluates the state of the art, and describes the design and implementation of the cognitive-affective architecture in an agent. A brief evaluation of the agent is provided.

Findings

The paper clearly states that it is possible to use cognitive architectures to help, but there is a lack of architectures that address the problem of combining cognition and emotion in agents in a unified, simplified way. A cognitive-affective architecture is useful to make believable intelligent agents in an easier way.

Research limitations/implications

The paper does not explore a lot of possible future work that can be done to extend the emotional expressions of the agent, as well as including direct emotional-sensing capabilities in real time.

Practical implications

The paper argues about the need to include cognitive-affective architectures in modern intelligent agents. The architecture allows to influence and modify the behavior of the agent in real time, to achieve a more realistic and believable interaction with the user.

Social implications

The paper remarks the importance of a cognitive-affective architecture that makes intelligent agents able to help the users in different tasks and environments.

Originality/value

The paper describes a new cognitive-affective architecture and its utility for modern intelligent agents. This is proven by including it in a previous agent, which boosts its behavior and emotional expression possibilities and thus improves user experience.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a grant from the Spanish “Dirección General de Investigación”, contract numbers TIN2011-24660 and TIN2015-67149-C3-1R.

Citation

Pérez Marco, J., Serón Arbeloa, F.J. and Cerezo Bagdasari, E. (2017), "Combining cognition and emotion in virtual agents", Kybernetes, Vol. 46 No. 06, pp. 933-946. https://doi.org/10.1108/K-11-2016-0340

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited

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