DOCSLIB.ORG

Kring-Moran-2008.Pdf

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Kring-Moran-2008.Pdf Schizophrenia Bulletin vol. 34 no. 5 pp. 819–834, 2008 doi:10.1093/schbul/sbn071 Advance Access publication on June 25, 2008 Emotional Response Deficits in Schizophrenia: Insights From Affective Science Ann M. Kring1,2 and Erin K. Moran2 Many factors have contributed to the relatively recent 2Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA increaseinresearchonemotioninschizophrenia,butacen- trally important factor has been the development and adoption of methods and theories in basic affective sci- Our understanding of the emotional features of schizophre- ence.Emotionwaslongconsideredtobethe‘‘blacksheep’’ nia has benefited greatly from the adoption of methods and of the family with respect to behaviors that could be em- theory from the field of affective science. This article covers pirically studied, but pioneering work by investigators basic concepts and methods from affective science on the psy- such as Paul Ekman and Carroll Izard in the 1960s paved chological and neural mechanisms contributing to emotions the way for emotion research to become not only well ac- and reviews the ways in which this research has advanced our cepted and integrated into psychology and neuroscience understanding of emotional response deficits in schizophre- but also as a discipline in its own right. Indeed, the explo- nia. We review naturalistic studies and elicitation studies sion of brain imaging techniques has further advanced our that evoke emotion responses among participants, including understanding of how emotion works at the level of the emotion expression, experience, and autonomic physiology. brain, and taken together, we now know a great deal about emotional behavior and its neural underpinnings (see We also consider how these emotion response mea- 4 5 sures correspond to schizophrenia symptoms, and we focus Barrett et al and Wager et al for recent reviews). particular attention on the issue of sex differences in emotional responding and how this may influence our under- Constraining Emotion and Emotion Disturbances in standing emotional functioning among individuals with Schizophrenia schizophrenia. From the affective science perspective, emotions are com- Key words: schizophrenia/emotion experience/ plex systems that have developed through the course of emotion expression/affect human evolutionary history to prepare organisms to act in response to a number of environmental stimuli and Theoretical and clinical writings in schizophrenia are re- challenges. Thus, under most circumstances, emotions serve a number of important intra- and interpersonal plete with rich descriptions of emotional disturbance that 6–9 date back to the early 20th century.1,2 For example, Ble- functions, a point which amplifies the notion that emo- uler noted tions are adaptive and not simply the bane of our rational or ‘‘reasoned’’ existence. The functions of emotion in per- ‘‘Occasionally, a patient will maintain that he has a marked sons with schizophrenia are comparable to those without and powerful affect, whereas the observer can note none or schizophrenia7,10; however, emotion disturbances in another type of affect than that which the patient professes schizophrenia can interfere with the achievement of these to feel (3(p51)).’’ important emotion-related functions. For example, This apparent disconnect between the outward display of a schizophrenia patient’s absence of facial expressions emotion and feeling that Bleuler referred to has now been may evoke negative responses from others,11 thus nega- confirmed empirically, and in the present article, we re- tively impacting social relationships and interactions.12 view the literature on emotion responding in schizophre- Emotional responses are typically considered to be nia and argue that the adoption of the affective science comprised of multiple components, including (but not approach has greatly advanced our understanding of limited to) expression, experience, and physiology. The the nature of emotion disturbances. extent to which these emotion components correspond with one another or cohere remains a topic of debate.13–15 Functionalist accounts of emotion suggest that coherence 9 1 among components is adaptive, yet the empirical data To whom correspondence should be addressed; Department of 13,16 Psychology, 3210 Tolman Hall, University of California, Berkeley, supporting coherence is mixed. CA 94720-1650; tel: 510-643-1560, fax: 510-642-5293, e-mail: The terms ‘‘affect’’ and ‘‘emotion’’ are often used in- [email protected]. terchangeably in the schizophrenia literature, but from Ó The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected]. 819 A. M. Kring & E. K. Moran the affective science perspective, there are important (1) studies that elicit(evoke, generate) emotion responses conceptual and empirical distinctions between the terms. from participants (eg, presenting emotionally evocative Specifically, affect is most often used in reference to feel- film clips and assessing reports of emotional experience), ing states, whereas emotion is used in reference to mul- (2) studies that assess perception(recognition) of affective tiple components (only one of which is a feeling state). stimuli (eg, presenting pictures of faces and assessing ac- By contrast, in the schizophrenia literature, affect is curacy of emotion expression identification), (3) natural- sometimes used to refer to a feeling state and sometimes istic studies that assess emotion in participants’ natural used to refer to the expression of emotion (eg, flat affect). environments (eg, assessing emotional experience in con- It does not seem likely that the affective science perspec- text of daily life several times a day for several days, ob- tive on terminology will take hold in the schizophrenia serving emotional behavior in an inpatient setting); (4) literature, nor is it clear that it need be adopted. However, studies that assess trait or individual differences in emo- it would be of benefit to the field to forego broad and tion components (eg, collecting self-report measures of uninformative terms such as ‘‘affect processing’’ or anhedonia or emotional expression), and (5) studies ‘‘emotion processing’’ (see also Herbener et al17). These that assess the impact of emotion on some other process terms are used to describe anything from the study of (eg, assessing how the emotional valence of words emotion facial expressions following the presentation impacts the ability to recall the words). Of course, these of emotionally evocative film clips to the reading of emo- are not rigid demarcations, and many studies combine tional words. Not only are these tasks different, but they more than one of these methods. For example, a study also recruit different brain regions in the service of per- may present emotionally evocative pictures and assess forming them5 and the behavioral outputs from these facial expression responses to the pictures and then later tasks are linked to different aspects of schizophrenia, in- test memory for the previously viewed pictures. Moreover, cluding specific symptoms and functional outcomes. Per- studies designed to elicit emotion will likely require rec- haps reflecting the fact that studies of emotion in ognition of the affective significance of the stimulus to schizophrenia are fewer and more recent than studies engender a response, and studies designed to assess the of cognitive deficits, such terminological imprecision perception of affective stimuli may well elicit an emotional might be expected. Indeed, ‘‘information processing’’ response.5 Nevertheless, it can be helpful to keep in mind was long used to describe different studies of cognition the goals and methods of the study with respect to what in schizophrenia until the translation of cognitive neuro- aspect(s) of emotion is being manipulated and assessed. science theory and methods to schizophrenia research It is also helpful to distinguish the types of dependent pointed to the importance of more clearly demarcating variables or measures of emotion included in particular the specific type of cognition (eg, episodic memory, cog- studies. Studies that elicit emotion are typically interested nitive control) under investigation, thus rendering the use in assessing emotional responses, such as facial expres- of the more vague term less likely (As a rough index of the sion, experience, physiology, or brain activation. Studies decline in the use of the term ‘‘information processing,’’ that assess perception or recognition of affective stimuli a PubMed search for ‘‘information processing and are typically interested in assessing accuracy of identifi- schizophrenia’’ in the title yielded 106 articles dating cation or discrimination, but these studies also may assess back to 1971. Three-quarters of these articles were pub- responses to these stimuli (eg, brain activation, auto- lished prior to the year 2000. A similar search in PsychIn- nomic physiology). Naturalistic studies often assess fo yielded 193 articles dating back to 1964; 80% of these reports of emotional experience in context (eg, when at were published prior to the year 2000.). As the current home, when with friends). Studies that assess emotion’s review will point out, there are important distinctions impact on some other process typically assess the other in which components of emotional response are (or are process of interest. For example,
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Tor Wager Diana L
    Tor Wager Diana L. Taylor Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences Dartmouth College Email: [email protected] https://wagerlab.colorado.edu Last Updated: July, 2019 Executive summary ● Appointments: Faculty since 2004, starting as Assistant Professor at Columbia ​ University. Associate Professor in 2009, moved to University of Colorado, Boulder in 2010; Professor since 2014. 2019-Present: Diana L. Taylor Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College. ● Publications: 240 publications with >50,000 total citations (Google Scholar), 11 papers ​ cited over 1000 times. H-index = 79. Journals include Science, Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, Nature Methods, PNAS, Psychological Science, PLoS Biology, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Nature Reviews Neurology, Nature Medicine, Journal of Neuroscience. ● Funding: Currently principal investigator on 3 NIH R01s, and co-investigator on other ​ collaborative grants. Past funding sources include NIH, NSF, Army Research Institute, Templeton Foundation, DoD. P.I. on 4 R01s, 1 R21, 1 RC1, 1 NSF. ● Awards: Awards include NSF Graduate Fellowship, MacLean Award from American ​ Psychosomatic Society, Colorado Faculty Research Award, “Rising Star” from American Psychological Society, Cognitive Neuroscience Society Young Investigator Award, Web of Science “Highly Cited Researcher”, Fellow of American Psychological Society. Two patents on research products. ● Outreach: >300 invited talks at universities/international conferences since 2005. ​ Invited talks in Psychology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Psychiatry, Neurology, Anesthesiology, Radiology, Medical Anthropology, Marketing, and others. Media outreach: Featured in New York Times, The Economist, NPR (Science Friday and Radiolab), CBS Evening News, PBS special on healing, BBC, BBC Horizons, Fox News, 60 Minutes, others.
    [Show full text]
  • I'm Sad You're Sad: Emotional Contagion In
    I’m Sad You’re Sad: Emotional Contagion in CMC Jeffrey T. Hancock,1,2 Kailyn Gee,2 Kevin Ciaccio2 & Jennifer Mae-Hwah Lin1 1Information Science 2Department of Communication Cornell University jth34, kg95, kac83, jml232 @cornell.edu ABSTRACT necessarily undermined in CMC. For example, in one An enduring assumption about computer-mediated study, participants were asked to act nicely or meanly to a communication is that it undermines emotional communication partner during a get to know you type task understanding. The present study examined emotional that took place either FtF or in CMC [11]. The results communication in CMC by inducing negative affect in one revealed that the partners could discern the likable and condition and neutral affect in another. The results revealed dislikable participants as accurately in the CMC condition that 1) participants experiencing negative affect produced as in the FtF condition. In a second study that more directly fewer words, used more sad terms, and exchanged examined emotional expression, participants acted either messages at a slower rate, 2) their partners were able to happy or sad while interacting with a partner through detect their partners emotional state, and 3) emotional Instant Messenger [7]. After the interaction, partners were contagion took place, in which partners interacting with easily able to determine whether their partner seemed happy participants in the negative affect condition had or sad. The study also provided some indications of how significantly less positive affect than partners in the control emotion is communicated through text: participants acting condition. These data support a relational view of CMC. sad used fewer words, agreed less with their partner, used Author Keywords less punctuation, and responded less quickly than Computer-mediated communication, Emotion, Affect participants acting happy (see also work by Gill et al, [4]).
    [Show full text]
  • Ekman, Emotional Expression, and the Art of Empirical Epiphany
    JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN PERSONALITY Journal of Research in Personality 38 (2004) 37–44 www.elsevier.com/locate/jrp Ekman, emotional expression, and the art of empirical epiphany Dacher Keltner* Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, 3319 Tolman, 94720 Berkeley, CA, USA Introduction In the mid and late 1960s, Paul Ekman offered a variety of bold assertions, some seemingly more radical today than others (Ekman, 1984, 1992, 1993). Emotions are expressed in a limited number of particular facial expressions. These expressions are universal and evolved. Facial expressions of emotion are remarkably brief, typically lasting 1 to 5 s. And germane to the interests of the present article, these brief facial expressions of emotion reveal a great deal about peopleÕs lives. In the present article I will present evidence that supports this last notion ad- vanced by Ekman, that brief expressions of emotion reveal important things about the individualÕs life course. To do so I first theorize about how individual differences in emotion shape the life context. With this reasoning as backdrop, I then review four kinds of evidence that indicate that facial expression is revealing of the life that the individual has led and is likely to continue leading. Individual differences in emotion and the shaping of the life context People, as a function of their personality or psychological disorder, create the sit- uations in which they act (e.g., Buss, 1987). Individuals selectively attend to certain features of complex situations, thus endowing contexts with idiosyncratic meaning. Individuals evoke responses in others, thus shaping the shared, social meaning of the situation.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Automated Face Analysis for Affective Computing Jeffrey F. Cohn & Fernando De La Torre Abstract Facial Expression
    Please do not quote. In press, Handbook of affective computing. New York, NY: Oxford Automated Face Analysis for Affective Computing Jeffrey F. Cohn & Fernando De la Torre Abstract Facial expression communicates emotion, intention, and physical state, and regulates interpersonal behavior. Automated Face Analysis (AFA) for detection, synthesis, and understanding of facial expression is a vital focus of basic research. While open research questions remain, the field has become sufficiently mature to support initial applications in a variety of areas. We review 1) human-observer based approaches to measurement that inform AFA; 2) advances in face detection and tracking, feature extraction, registration, and supervised learning; and 3) applications in action unit and intensity detection, physical pain, psychological distress and depression, detection of deception, interpersonal coordination, expression transfer, and other applications. We consider user-in-the-loop as well as fully automated systems and discuss open questions in basic and applied research. Keywords Automated Face Analysis and Synthesis, Facial Action Coding System (FACS), Continuous Measurement, Emotion, Nonverbal Communication, Synchrony 1. Introduction The face conveys information about a person’s age, sex, background, and identity, what they are feeling, or thinking (Darwin, 1872/1998; Ekman & Rosenberg, 2005). Facial expression regulates face-to-face interactions, indicates reciprocity and interpersonal attraction or repulsion, and enables inter-subjectivity between members of different cultures (Bråten, 2006; Fridlund, 1994; Tronick, 1989). Facial expression reveals comparative evolution, social and emotional development, neurological and psychiatric functioning, and personality processes (Burrows & Cohn, In press; Campos, Barrett, Lamb, Goldsmith, & Stenberg, 1983; Girard, Cohn, Mahoor, Mavadati, & Rosenwald, 2013; Schmidt & Cohn, 2001). Not surprisingly, the face has been of keen interest to behavioral scientists.
    [Show full text]
  • Literature Review: Is the Emotional Expression of Contempt
    Literature Review: Is the Emotional Expression of Contempt Recognized Universally or Culturally? Julianna Phoukhao University of California, Merced Keywords: Contempt, Facial Expression, Forced Choice, Freely Labeling, Universal, Cultural, Emotion. 1 Abstract The universal facial expression of contempt is often described as one lip corner raised and tightened. This literature reviews whether or not this expression is recognized universally. After examining theories and methods, low agreement of this expression recognized as contempt was found across cultures. Evidence so far is not sufficient enough to support the unilateral lip corner as an universal expression for contempt. The expression and recognition of contempt is highly dependent on culture and context. 2 Literature Review Contempt is an emotion described as annoyance (Alvarado, 1996), ignoring or belittling a person (Fischer & Roseman, 2007), and involving another person’s negative actions and feelings of superiority (Wagner, 2000). This emotion is usually initiated when one perceives the inability to change or correct another person’s behavior. The social function of contempt is to end a relationship through rejection and exclusion (Fischer & Roseman, 2007). The concept of emotions serving functions dates back to Darwin’s days (1876) when he proposed the physiological component and facial expressions of basic emotions as innate because they serve towards a goal in one’s environment. He used his observations of evolution as evidence of the universality of emotions. Ekman (1971) challenged Darwin’s theory by conducting his own research in a remote village of Papua New Guinea. Ekman discovered emotions as innate and recognizable through facial expression. His research has also suggested the universality of a contempt expression (Ekman, 1988).
    [Show full text]
  • The Future of Emotion Research in the Study of Psychopathology
    Emotion Review Vol. 2, No. 3 (July 2010) 225–228 © 2010 SAGE Publications and The International Society for Research on Emotion The Future of Emotion Research in the Study ISSN 1754-0739 DOI: 10.1177/1754073910361986 of Psychopathology er.sagepub.com Ann M. Kring Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, USA Abstract Research on emotion and psychopathology has blossomed due in part to the translation of affective science theory and methods to the study of diverse disorders. This translational approach has helped the field to hone in more precisely on the nature of emo- tion deficits to identify antecedent causes and maintaining processes, and to develop promising new interventions. The future of emotion research in psychopathology will benefit from three inter-related areas, including an emphasis on emotion difficulties that cut across traditional diagnostic boundaries (i.e., a transdiagnostic approach), the explicit linking of emotion and cognition in behavioral and neuroimaging studies in psychopathology, and continued translation of the latest conceptualizations of emotion to the study of psychopathology. Keywords cognition, emotion, mental illness, psychopathology, transdiagnostic In the past two decades, the number of studies on emotion and Where We Have Been psychopathology has expanded greatly. A search in PsychInfo for peer-reviewed articles containing the most generic of key- Given the ubiquity of emotion-related symptoms in psychopa- words, “emotion” and “mental illness” or “psychopathology”, thology (e.g., anger, anhedonia, anxiety, excited mood, fear, yields 613 peer reviewed articles in just the past 20 years. By flat affect, guilt, irritability, sad mood), most of the early contrast, 441 articles with these keywords are found for the 80 research sought to describe emotion-related disturbances.
    [Show full text]
  • Expert Meeting on Empathy and Compassion
    Expert Meeting on Empathy and Compassion Leveraging Basic Research to Inform Intervention Development September 16–17, 2019 Washington, DC Final March 17, 2020 This meeting summary was prepared by Frances McFarland, Rose Li and Associates, Inc., under contract to the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health. The views expressed in this document reflect both individual and collective opinions of the meeting participants and not necessarily those of the National Institute on Aging. Review of earlier versions of this meeting summary by the following individuals is gratefully acknowledged: Arielle Baskin- Sommers, Sona Dimidjian, Rebecca Lazeration, Robert Levenson, Rose Li, Abigail Marsh, Joan Monin, Lis Nielsen, Lisa Onken, Nancy Tuvesson, Greg Siegle, Lucas Smalldon, Bethany Stokes Expert Meeting on Empathy and Compassion September 2019 Acronym Definitions AD Alzheimer’s disease ADRD AD and related dementias BBCSS NASEM Board of Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences BSR NIA Division of Behavioral and Social Research bvFTD behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia CBT cognitive behavioral therapy CM compassion meditation LKM lovingkindness meditation NASEM National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine NIA National Institute on Aging RCT randomized controlled trial SOBC Science of Behavior Change Acronym Definitions Page i Expert Meeting on Empathy and Compassion September 2019 Table of Contents Executive Summary ..............................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • A Provisional Taxonomy of Subjectively Experienced Positive Emotions
    Affective Science https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-020-00009-7 RESEARCH ARTICLE A Provisional Taxonomy of Subjectively Experienced Positive Emotions Aaron C. Weidman1 & Jessica L. Tracy1 Received: 3 September 2019 /Accepted: 11 March 2020 # The Society for Affective Science 2020 Abstract Over the past two decades, scholars have conducted studies on the subjective experience of over 30 positive emotional states (see Weidman, Steckler, & Tracy, 2017). Yet, evidence from research on the non-verbal expression and biological correlates of positive emotions suggests that people likely experience far fewer than 30 distinct positive emotions. The present research provided an initial, lexically driven examination of how many, and which, positive emotions cohere as distinct subjective experiences, at both the state and trait levels. Four studies (including two pre-registered replications) using factor and network analyses of 5939 participants’ emotional experiences, elicited through the relived emotions task, found consistent evidence for nine distinct positive emotion states and five distinct traits. At both levels, many frequently studied positive emotions were found to overlap considerably or entirely with other ostensibly distinct states in terms of the subjective components used to describe them, suggesting that researchers currently study more positive emotions than individuals experience distinctively. These find- ings provide the first-ever comprehensive portrait of the taxonomic structure of subjectively experienced positive emotions, with
    [Show full text]
  • On the Natural History of Emotions: Darwin's Legacy
    revista de historia de la psicología © 2009: Publicacions de la Universitat de València 2009,On the vol. natural 30, núm. history 2-3 (junio-septiembre) of emotions 161-168 Valencia (España). ISSN: 0211-0040161 On the natural history of emotions: Darwin’s legacy Paulo Jesus* Universidade Lusófono do Porto Abstract One of the most striking applications of Darwinian principles resides in the evolutionary account of expression of emotions. The main purpose of this paper is to ask some fundamental questions concerning this realm of Darwinian investigations and its implicit or explicit legacy in contem- porary psychology of emotions, which appears inhabited by the essential tension between the primacy of embodiment (from James to Damasio) and that of cognitive mediation (from Peirce to Lazarus). One should ask again: what is an emotion? Is it reducible to a bodily expression or is there any qualitative difference between emotion and expression? Why do emotions belong to the phenomena of life? How do the grammar of life and the grammar of culture interact in emotional expressions? What is the «truth» of Darwin’s principles on expressions and what degree of coherence can be detected when one attempts at integrating the theory of emotions in the larger picture of the evolution of life forms and cultural meaningful phenomena? Darwin is systematically attracted towards normative invariants, that is, nomological relation- ships and functions which organise a dynamic morphogenetic process. Thus, Darwin’s theory of expression of emotions identifies a set of three universal principles that complement each other. These comprise not only the notion of adaptive behaviour, association of learned habits and evolution of instinct, but also that of body structure (specially the web of muscles that define and constrain the landscape of the face), inheritance of movements and independent action of the nervous system.
    [Show full text]
  • Challenges and Opportunities for the Affective Sciences
    Fox et al., Research Agenda for the Affective Sciences 1 Challenges and Opportunities for the Affective Sciences Andrew S. Fox* Department of Psychology and California National Primate Research Center, University of California, Davis, CA USA Regina C. Lapate* Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA USA Richard J. Davidson Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, WI USA Alexander J. Shackman* Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, and Maryland Neuroimaging Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD USA * contributed equally Word Count: Title (7 words); Main Text (3,909/3,500); References (107) Additional Elements: 1 Figure and 1 Box Abstract: 94 words Keywords: affective neuroscience; biological psychiatry; emotion; individual differences; neuroimaging Address Correspondence to: Andrew S. Fox ([email protected]) –or– Alexander J. Shackman ([email protected]) Fox et al., Research Agenda for the Affective Sciences 2 ABSTRACT (94 words) Emotion is a core feature of the human condition, with profound consequences for health, wealth, and wellbeing. Over the past quarter-century, improved methods for manipulating and measuring different features of emotion have yielded steady advances in our scientific understanding emotional states, traits, and disorders. Yet, it is clear that most of the work remains undone. Here, we highlight key challenges facing the field of affective sciences. Addressing these challenges will provide critical opportunities not just for understanding the mind, but also for increasing the impact of the affective sciences on public health and well-being. Fox et al., Research Agenda for the Affective Sciences 3 INTRODUCTION Emotions play a central role in human experience and there is an abiding interest—among scientists, clinicians, and the public at large—in understanding their nature and determining their impact on health and disease.
    [Show full text]
  • Comparative Analysis of Joy and Awe in Four Cultures Daria B
    James Madison University JMU Scholarly Commons Dissertations The Graduate School Spring 2017 Being and beholding: Comparative analysis of joy and awe in four cultures Daria B. White James Madison University Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/diss201019 Part of the Counselor Education Commons, and the Multicultural Psychology Commons Recommended Citation White, Daria B., "Being and beholding: Comparative analysis of joy and awe in four cultures" (2017). Dissertations. 150. https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/diss201019/150 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the The Graduate School at JMU Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of JMU Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Being and Beholding: Comparative Analysis of Joy and Awe in Four Cultures Daria Borislavova White A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy Department of Graduate Psychology May 2017 FACULTY COMMITTEE: Committee Chair: Dr. Debbie Sturm Committee Members: Dr. Lennis Echterling Dr. Cara Meixner Dedication I dedicate this dissertation to all the wonderful people who shared the most precious “eternal moments” of their lives with me. To all of you, I offer my heartfelt gratitude. I have rejoiced in reading and rereading your stories, living with your memories, learning from you all how to be be-filled and beholding. I write in remembrance of two beloved people who died in 2008 – my brother Ivaylo, whose bear hugs, warmth and sharing nature were a shelter for me, and my friend Mirela, whose pure soul, tinkling laughter and sharp intelligence are irreplaceable.
    [Show full text]
  • Computational Affective Science
    Computational Affective Science Joost Broekens [email protected] Man-Machine Interaction, TU Delft, The Netherlands In the target article, Hudlicka points out very clearly that there are several key challenges in affective computing in general and computational modeling of emotion in particular. The lack of guidelines and the sharing of best-practices as well as failures are some of those challenges. These challenges are very relevant when one is interested in the development of computational models of emotion that are focused on being applied in particular domain, for example games, virtual avatars or social robots [1]. As Hudlicka shows, choices and assumptions have to be made when developing a computational model based on, e.g., an appraisal theory. More often than not, these choices and assumptions are left unaddressed in the final publications, and rarely are the object of experimental investigation, while it is precisely these choices that make the computational model run in the first place (e.g., some representation of a goal is needed, but how is a goal represented in the agent?). Hudlicka provides an impressive overview of the different choices one has to make and the different options one has when computationally modeling emotion. It is therefore interesting to note that for many of these options it is unclear, not due to Hudlicka’s overview but due to the lack of experimental data, why one should pick one or the other if one is interested in grounding the option in emotion psychology. For example, how and when to integrate (mix) emotions is a thorny issue that is far from solved.
    [Show full text]