Emotional influences on perception in artificial agents

Abstract

This paper proposes a model of emotionally influenced perception in an affective agent. Via a multidimensional representation of emotion, a mechanism called the affective space is used to emotionally filter sensed stimuli in the agent's environment. This filtering process allows different emotional states in the agent to create dissimilar emotional reactions when the agent is exposed to the same stimuli. In humans, emotion cannot be a mechanism that enhances intelligence and then isolated from other psychological and physiological functions. As this paper suggests, emotion is an integral part of the human as a biological being and therefore they cannot be turned on and off on a whim. However, this luxury is afforded to the artificial agent. This approach builds on contemporary affective agent architectural concepts as it not only gives an agent the ability to use emotion to produce human-like intelligence, but it also investigates how emotion should affect the agent's other abilities, such as perception