At AISB 2017 (April, in Bath, England) there will be a symposium on Computational Modelling of Emotion: Theory and Applications. The symposium chairs are Dr. Dean Petters (Psychology) and Dr. David Moffatt (Computer Science).

Dr. Sylwia Hyniewska and I will submit a paper on emotion as perturbance, using insomnia and limerence as windows onto this phenomenon. We will argue that practical and applied psychology, cognitive science and AI need to consider perturbance as a separate phenomenon. We will show that this design-based concept is related to but different from, intrusive thinking, rumination , obsession and other forms of emotion — phenomena that it can help explain. We also will discuss technology-assisted regulation of perturbance.

For related papers of mine, see this web page at Simon Fraser University.

I encourage researchers interested in designer-based approaches to emotion and affective psychotherapy to participate in the symposium. I am also on the program committee.

Here’s the Symposium’s program.

• Cognition-emotion interactions, including: how models explain the nature of interaction between reasoning and emotion, and the emotional underpinnings of reasoning;
• Computational architectures which model emotion
• Models of affect which are incorporated within applications in human computer interaction and health technology. For example, in the health domain, emotion models which can enhance assessment, diagnosis and treatment.
• Explaining how technological applications can be used to make contributions to psychological theory
• Embodied, situated and enactivist approaches to emotion
• Emotion model validation
• Towards computational models for online dynamic diagnosis and therapeutic interventions
• Modelling of emotion regulation for self-help, cognitive and mindfulness psychotherapy, and positive psychology.
• Emotion modelling in computational psychiatry, including investigating the mechanisms of pathological thinking and emotion
• Attachment modelling
• How emotions and cognitions shape each other over different timescales, from momentary episodes to longer term affective states and the development of personality
• How the interaction between cognition and emotion relates to mechanisms of self-control, meta-management and coherence in thought and behaviour, and loss of these states
• as the AISB convention has the overall theme of “Society with AI,” submissions are welcome that focus on social and ethical questions, including:
  • Can artificial systems be given the full range of human emotions? Or can these emotions simply emerge from the functioning of the model components? If #yes., are there ethical limitations in what systems should be created or allowed to develop?
  • How will people respond to emotional agents as they become more realistic?; What implications will sophisticated emotional agents have for human to human relations, and how humans understand what it means to be human?
  • the near-future relevance of emotions in AI,
  • the potential benefits or threats to society.

2017-01-26 update: A CogZest blog article about our submission.