Dear EUCOG list
please find details of a IEEE Transactions in Affective Computing Special Issue on 'Computational Modelling of Emotion: Theory and Applications'
https://www.computer.org/web/tac
Schedule:
- Abstract submission: May 11th 2018 (abstracts should e-mailed directly to guest editors at d.d.petters@cs.bham.ac.uk, by a deadline of May 11th 2018, that it may be possible to negotiate a later date for submitting the abstract – please contact the guest editors at d.d.petters@cs.bham.ac.uk)
- Closed for submissions: June 9th 2018
- Results of first round of reviews: 10 Sept 2018
- Submission of revised manuscripts: 1 Jan 2019
- Results of second round of reviews: 1 Feb 2019
- Publication materials due: 30th March 2019
Call:
In the early decades of cognitive science research, emotion was either absent or side-lined from most computational models of human behaviour. Since then interest in attempts to computationally model emotions has grown, with many projects now either attempting to understand natural emotions or to implement synthetic emotions in chatbots, virtual agents or robots, for practical uses of many sorts from entertainment to caring. Whilst there are now numerous models of affective phenomena in the literature, they differ in important respects. They differ in how they describe and explain a range of phenomena, including the nature and order of perceptual, cognitive and emotional mental processes and behavioural responses in emotional episodes. They also differ in their target level of granularity: from fine-grained neural to coarse-grained psychological. Different models simulate emotions (and other mental states) with different ontological status and with a different focus on whether they model external behaviour or internal states. This diversity provides a challenge, but also an opportunity.
This special issue aims to facilitate movement towards a mature integrated field with a deeper and richer understanding of biological minds and also design functionalities of applied models by more clearly setting out interrelationships between models and present attempts to provide formal or standard models of particular approaches within emotion modelling. For example, Marsella, Gratch and Petta (2010) focus on appraisal and dimensional models and Scherer (2010) sets out a broader taxonomic analysis including radically different kinds of emotion models, including: appraisal; adaptational; dimensional; motivational; circuit; discrete; lexical and social constructivist models. Whilst Broekens, DeGroot and Kosters (2008) provide a deeper yet narrower analysis by formalising the structure of emotional appraisal structures with a notation for the declarative semantics of these kinds of emotional states. Hudlicka (2011) shows how a broader organising approach can progress by highlighting the generation and effect of emotions as fundamental processes with associated 'generic tasks' that can lead to broad categorisations useful in creating guidelines for model development and more systematic comparison of existing models. The project for standardisation and formalisation for emotion models is taken further by Reisenzein, Hudlicka, Dastani, Gratch, Hindriks, Lorini, and Meyer (2013), who propose further standardisation; formalisation; and in addition, integration of emotion models with existing prominent and widely used cognitive architectures. Standardisation can involve benchmark scenarios and replication of results. However, benchmarks can have a negative influence on progress if they become narrow targets for model development. This kind of narrow development can be minimised by clarity regarding how the modelling is done and what theoretical or applied goals are to be achieved for a given model.
Contributions that move this debate in the literature forward by further identifying and attempting to remedy gaps in current research on affective phenomena are particularly welcome. For example, some emotion models fail to acknowledge that emotions are just a subcategory of "affect". Richer theories and models should include motives, attachments, preferences, values, standards, attitudes, moods, ambitions, obsessions, humour, grief, various kinds of pride, and various other social, complex and secondary emotions as well as moral and aesthetic phenomena. The narrow focus may not matter much for narrowly focused applications of AI, such as toys or entertainment, but it can lead to serious omissions and distortions in attempts to advance the science of mind through computational modelling.
Therefore the aims of this special issue include: presenting the state of the art in emotion modelling and considering how existing research in modelling of emotions, motivation and other varieties of affect can be integrated, validated and compared with each other as well as with possible 'standard models' of emotion. The special edition also aims to explaining how technological applications based on this broader, more standardised and formalised approach can be used to make contributions to psychological theory.
Submission process:
abstracts should e-mailed directly to guest editors at d.d.petters@cs.bham.ac.uk, by a deadline of May 11th 2018, it may be possible to negotiate a later date for submitting the abstract – please contact the guest editors at d.d.petters@cs.bham.ac.uk
Submission point for full papers by the deadline of June 9th 2018: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/taffc-cs
The expected page lengths is up to and usually not over 12 formatted, double column pages.
Further author instructions on this page: https://www.computer.org/web/tac/author (which includes latex and other document templates)
This IEEE TAC special issue will accept improved and enlarged conference papers, (an approximate guide is around at least 30% longer/improved material from the conference publication).
Guest editors:
Dean Petters (senior lecturer in psychology, Dept. of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Birmingham City University UK, d.petters@wlv.ac.uk).
Joel Parthemore (visiting researcher, Dept. of Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, University of Skövde, Sweden, joel.parthemore@his.se).
David Moffatt (lecturer, School of Engineering and Built Environment, Glasgow Caledonian University, D.C.Moffat@gcu.ac.uk).
Celso De Melo (computer scientist, US Army Research Laboratory, Playa Vista, CA, celso.miguel.de.melo@gmail.com).
Christian Becker-Asano (research scientist, Bosch R&D, Renningen, Germany, christian@becker-asano.de).