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Combining Cognitive Appraisal and Sensors for Affect Detection in a Framework for Modeling User Affect

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Abstract

In this chapter, we present an approach to modeling user affect that combines explicit information on both causes of emotional reaction (expressed in terms of cognitive appraisal theory) and effects of such reactions (detected via philological sensors). One advantage of this approach is that using both sources increases model accuracy. As second advantage is that, by assessing not only which emotions the user is feeling but also why they arise, this model enhances a system’s ability to adequately respond to these emotions. We first describe the general approach and its theoretical underpinnings. We then introduce the general steps needed to build an affective user model following our approach, and discuss how these steps were implemented to build the affective model for Prime Climb, a user-adaptive educational game for math. We conclude by reporting results on an empirical evaluation of the model.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Currently, the dialog box only elicits information on emotions towards the game and the agent because dealing with three pairs of emotions turned out to be too overwhelming for students.

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Correspondence to Cristina Conati .

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Conati, C. (2011). Combining Cognitive Appraisal and Sensors for Affect Detection in a Framework for Modeling User Affect. In: Calvo, R., D'Mello, S. (eds) New Perspectives on Affect and Learning Technologies. Explorations in the Learning Sciences, Instructional Systems and Performance Technologies, vol 3. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9625-1_6

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