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An Agent Model for Cognitive and Affective Empathic Understanding of Other Agents

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Book cover Transactions on Computational Collective Intelligence VI

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((TCCI,volume 7190))

Abstract

This paper focuses on modelling capabilities to interpret another person’s mind, taking into account both affective and cognitive states. A basic agent model to generate emotional responses and feelings in response to certain stimuli is taken as a point of departure. For the case these stimuli concern observation of another person’s body state (e.g., face expressions), emotion reading is achieved, following the Simulation Theory approach to mindreading. Furthermore, by taking (internal) cognitive states instead of stimuli as a source for emotional responses, it is shown how to model the way in which a person associates feelings to cognitive states. Moreover, it is shown how another person can obtain empathic understanding of a person by simulating the way in which feelings are associated to cognitive states. The obtained agent model describes how the empathic agent deals with another agent’s cognitive states and the associated feelings, thus not only understanding the other agent’s cognitive state but at the same time feeling the accompanying emotion of the other agent.

Parts of the work described in this paper have been presented at the 8th IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT’08), and at the First International Conference on Computational Collective Intelligence (ICCCI’09).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Agent Systems Research Group, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081, 1081, HV, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Zulfiqar A. Memon & Jan Treur

  2. Sukkur Institute of Business Administration (Sukkur IBA), Air Port Road Sukkur, Sindh, Pakistan

    Zulfiqar A. Memon

Authors
  1. Zulfiqar A. Memon
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  2. Jan Treur
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland

    Ngoc Thanh Nguyen

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Memon, Z.A., Treur, J. (2012). An Agent Model for Cognitive and Affective Empathic Understanding of Other Agents. In: Nguyen, N.T. (eds) Transactions on Computational Collective Intelligence VI. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7190. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29356-6_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29356-6_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-29355-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-29356-6

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