Acording to (Benny Ping-Han Lee et.al. 2006)
the emotion models and architectures for virtual
agents are not yet advanced enough to be imbued
with coexisting emotions but this is very important
because mixed emotions, especially those in
conflict, sway agent decisions and result in dramatic
changes in social scenarios.
In order to contribute to further development of
the described problems, this paper investigates the
social behavior of an intelligent virtual agent (IVA)
with PRE-ThINK architecture by means of typical
working student’s life scenario modeling. Тhe
program system and the PRE-ThINK architecture,
adapted for this scenario, are proposed. The basic
modules of the programming system and the
implementation of this architecture are considered.
The mechanism of arising of the agent’s thoughts, as
well as their assessment, are cleared out. The
dynamics of the decision making process in problem
situations is shown, when mixed emotions arise and
the IVA’s behavior changes in a way, allowing
achieving all of the goals of the scenario,.
The social behavior, shown by the agent, as well
as his/her generalized condition of awareness, which
are not always in harmony, are explained and
presented. The proposed scenario allows for
modeling and expressing of both primary and
secondary emotions. The social emotions, shown by
the IVA, when giving answers to user’s questions in
the experimental on-line information site, are a
mixture of primary (spontaneously caused by the
current context emotions) and secondary emotions
(demonstrated - learned from IVA’s experience in a
similar situation; and realized – caused by the IVA’s
self-esteem related to his/her generalized condition
and by all the simultaneous events, hidden for the
users).
The rest of this paper is organized as follows:
Section 2 considers similar developments; the third
section presents the scenario for the goals of the
experiment; the fourth section comprises the
description of the programming system and the
model of IVA with PRE-ThINK architecture,
adapted for typical working student’s life scenario
modeling. Section 5 gives description of the
experimental results. The sixth section includes
discussion and directions for further development of
the programming system; a generalization of the
present work is proposed at the end.
2 BACKGROUND
There is a considerable body of work on social
norms and norms in conversations in particular,
including formalization of norms and obligations
(Boella, G., Torre, L.v.d. 2003), how norms emerge,
spread and get enforced in a society (Castelfranchi,
C. 1995), levels of cooperation in social
communications (Airenti, G., Bara, B. G.,
Colombetti, M. 1993), discourse obligations in
dialogues (Traum, D. R., Allen, J. F. 1994) etc.
In Thespian's decision-theoretic framework (Si
Mei, Marsella, Pynadath 2006), conversational
norms enable the characters to behave human-like
by making relevant responses, following natural
turn-taking patterns, and having appropriate
conversational flow. (deRosis Fiorella, C. Pelachaud
et. al. 2003) as well as Prendinger and colleagues
(Prendinger Helmut and Mitsuru Ishizuka 2001)
developed agents that are able to control their
emotional displays if the social situation requires it.
For instance, if the social distance between an agent
and its conversational partner is high, Prendinger’s
agent would not show anger to the full extent.
The virtual tutor COSMO (Lester J. C. et. al.
2000) intentionally portrays emotions with the goal
of motivating students and thus increasing the
learning effect.
In the WASABI architecture (Becker-Asano, C.,
Wachsmuth, I.) use their agent’s cognitive reasoning
abilities to model the mood-congruent elicitation of
secondary emotions as well. They explain how nine
primary emotions together with three secondary
emotions—namely the prospect-based emotions
hope, fears-confirmed, and relief —were integrated
in such a way that their mood congruent elicitation
can be guaranteed. They discussing results of a study
on the effect of secondary emotion simulation in a
card game scenario.
Many researchers model IVA behaviour aiming
at establishing a trust-based relationship between the
user and the IVA (Celso M. de Melo et. al. 2009,
Gratch et. al 2007, Bickmore et. al.2007,
Niewiadomski et. al. 2008).
In the present paper the agent with PRE-ThINK
architecture proposed in (Budakova D. 2011)
(abbreviation from the initial letters of the basic
components making it up - Principles, Rationalities,
Emotions, Thoughts, Investigations, Needs, and
Knowledge) is used to investigate social behavior in
typical working student’s life scenario.
3 THE SCENARIO
For the purposes of the experiment the behavior of
the typical working student is modeled, that have to
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