Affective computing is a fascinating new area of research emerging in computer science. It dwells on problems where "computing is related to, arises from or deliberately influences emotions" (Picard 1997). Following this new research direction and considering the human element as crucial in designing and implementing interactive intelligent interfaces, affective computing is now influencing the way we shape, design, construct, and evaluate human-computer interaction and computer-mediated communcation. This book originates from a workshop devoted to affective interactions. It presents revised full versions of several papers accepted in preliminary version for the workshop and various selectively solicited papers by key people as well as an introductory survey by the volume editor and interview with Rosaling Picard, a pioneer researcher in the field. The book competently assesses the state of the art in this fascinating new field.

Since interactions may occur between animals, humans, or computational agents, an interdisciplinary approach which investigates foundations of affective communication in a variety of platforms is indispensable. In the field of affective computing, a collection of research, merging decades of research on emotions in psychology, cognition and neuroscience will inspire creative future research projects and contribute to the prosperity of this emerging field. Affective Computing and Interaction: Psychological, Cognitive and Neuroscientific Perspectives examines the current state and the future prospects of affect in computing within the context of interactions. Uniting several aspects of affective interactions and topics in affective computing, this reference reviews basic foundations of emotions, furthers an understanding of the contribution of affect to our lives and concludes by revealing current trends and promising technologies for reducing the emotional gap between humans and machines, all within the context of interactions.

Affective computing is a fascinating new area of research emerging in computer science. It dwells on problems where "computing is related to, arises from or deliberately influences emotions" (Picard 1997). Following this new research direction and considering the human element as crucial in designing and implementing interactive intelligent interfaces, affective computing is now influencing the way we shape, design, construct, and evaluate human-computer interaction and computer-mediated communcation. This book originates from a workshop devoted to affective interactions. It presents revised full versions of several papers accepted in preliminary version for the workshop and various selectively solicited papers by key people as well as an introductory survey by the volume editor and interview with Rosaling Picard, a pioneer researcher in the field. The book competently assesses the state of the art in this fascinating new field.

The learning process can be seen as an emotional and personal experience that is addictive and motivates learners to proactive behaviour. New research methods in this field are related to affective and emotional approaches to computer-supported learning and human-computer interactions. The major topics discussed are emotions, motivation, games and game-experience. The book is divided in three parts, part I, Game-based Learning, reflects upon the two-way interaction between game and student, thus enabling the game to react to the student’s emotional state. Having the possibility to detect and steer the emotional state of the student could have a positive impact on using digital games in education. It is claimed that some commercial computer games increase cognitive skills and may enhance multitasking abilities and the participants’ general ability to learn. Part II, Motivation and Learning, analyses whether the absence or presence of social and personal cues in the communication between a tutor and his or her students influence students’ learning and their satisfaction with the tutor and the course. The research showed that not all types of personal information are equally important and possibly pictorial information is more important than audible information. Part III, Emotions and Emotional Agents, discusses the production of learning environments which enhance the learner’s self esteem, ensure that the learner’s best interests are respected through paying attention to the narrative structures of the learner’s experience, and the ways in which communication can be enhanced through empathy with the learner.

A study that goes beyond the debate over functional specialization to describe the ways that emotion and cognition interact and are integrated in the brain. The idea that a specific brain circuit constitutes the emotional brain (and its corollary, that cognition resides elsewhere) shaped thinking about emotion and the brain for many years. Recent behavioral, neuropsychological, neuroanatomy, and neuroimaging research, however, suggests that emotion interacts with cognition in the brain. In this book, Luiz Pessoa moves beyond the debate over functional specialization, describing the many ways that emotion and cognition interact and are integrated in the brain. The amygdala is often viewed as the quintessential emotional region of the brain, but Pessoa reviews findings revealing that many of its functions contribute to attention and decision making, critical components of cognitive functions. He counters the idea of a subcortical pathway to the amygdala for affective visual stimuli with an alternate framework, the multiple waves model. Citing research on reward and motivation, Pessoa also proposes the dual competition model, which explains emotional and motivational processing in terms of their influence on competition processes at both perceptual and executive function levels. He considers the broader issue of structure-function mappings, and examines anatomical features of several regions often associated with emotional processing, highlighting their connectivity properties. As new theoretical frameworks of distributed processing evolve, Pessoa concludes, a truly dynamic network view of the brain will emerge, in which "emotion" and "cognition" may be used as labels in the context of certain behaviors, but will not map cleanly into compartmentalized pieces of the brain.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction, ACII 2005, held in Beijing, China in October 2005 as an associated event of ICCV 2005, the International Conference on Computer Vision. The 45 revised full papers and 81 revised poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 198 submissions. They cover a wide range of topics, such as facial expression recognition, face animation, emotional speech synthesis, intelligent agent, and virtual reality. The papers are organized in topical sections on affective face and gesture processing, affective speech processing, evaluation of affective expressivity, affective database, annotation and tools, psychology and cognition of affect, and affective interaction and systems and applications.