This paper describes the implementation and evaluation of a framework for modeling emotions in complex, decision-making agents. Sponsored by U.S. Army Research Institute (ARI), the objective of this research is to make the decision-making process of complex agents less predictable and more realistic, by incorporating emotional factors that affect humans. In tune with modern theories of emotions, we regard emotions essentially as subconscious signals and evaluations that inform, modify, and receive feedback from a variety of sources including higher cognitive processes and the sensorimotor system. Thus, our work explicitly distinguishes the subconscious processes (in a connectionist implementation) and the decision making that is subject to emotional influences (in a symbolic cognitive architecture).It is our position that "emotional states" are emergent patterns of interaction between decision-making knowledge and these emotional signal systems. To this end, we have adopted an approach that promotes the emergence of behavior as a result of complex interactions between factors affecting emotions, integrated in the connectionist-style model, and factors affecting decision making, represented in the symbolic model. This paper presents the implementation of emotions architecture and explains how we evaluated the system. This includes a description of the behaviors we used in our prototype, the design of our experiments, a representative set of behavior patterns that emerged as a result of exercising our model over the design space, and our project's lessons learned

Our research focuses on complex agents that are capable of interacting with their environments in ways that are increasingly similar to individual humans. In this article we describe a cognitive architecture for an interactive decisionmaking agent with emotions. The primary goal of this work is to make the decision-making process of complex agents more realistic with regard to the behavior moderators, including emotional factors that affect humans. Instead of uniform agents that rely entirely on a deterministic body of expertise to make their decisions, the decision making process of our agents will vary according to select emotional factors affecting the agent as well as the agent's parameterized emotional profile. The premise of this model is that emotions serve as a kind of automatic assessment system that can guide or otherwise influence the more deliberative decision making process. The primary components of this emotional system are pleasure/pain and clarity/confusion subsystems that differentiate between positive and negative states. These, in turn, feed into an arousal system that interfaces with the decision-making system. We are testing our model using synthetic specialforces agents in a reconnaissance simulation.

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Our research focuses on complex agents that are capable of interacting with their environments in ways that are increasingly similar to individual humans. In this article we describe a cognitive architecture for an interactive decisionmaking agent with emotions. The primary goal of this work is to make the decision-making process of complex agents more realistic with regard to the behavior moderators, including emotional factors that affect humans. Instead of uniform agents that rely entirely on a deterministic body of expertise to make their decisions, the decision making process of our agents will vary according to select emotional factors affecting the agent as well as the agent's parameterized emotional profile. The premise of this model is that emotions serve as a kind of automatic assessment system that can guide or otherwise influence the more deliberative decision making process. The primary components of this emotional system are pleasure/pain and clarity/confusion subsystems that differentiate between positive and negative states. These, in turn, feed into an arousal system that interfaces with the decision-making system. We are testing our model using synthetic specialforces agents in a reconnaissance simulation. Categories and Subject Descriptors General TermsHuman Factors. KeywordsEmotion, arousal, pleasure, pain, clarity, confusion. EMOTIONS AND DECISION-MAKINGThis paper describes a framework for modeling emotions in an interactive, decision-making agent intended to provide a nearly human level of competence in a focused task domain. We regard emotions essentially as subconscious signals and evaluations that inform, modify, and receive feedback from a variety of sources including higher cognitive processes and the sensorimotor system. Because our project focuses on decision making, our model emphasizes those aspects of emotion that influence higher cognition and not those that affect, for example, the immune system. We are integrating a connectionist model of emotions from Chown [1] with Rosenbloom, Laird, and Newell's [4] Soar architecture. The application area incorporates emotions and individual differences into the behavior models of synthetic special-forces agents in an army reconnaissance simulation.In our framework, symbolic assessments of a small set of "emotional attributes" reside in a working memory. Portions of working memory are accessible by the deliberate cognitive process, and portions are accessible by the emotion mechanisms, so memory serves as the interface between the two. These working memory elements combine with background knowledge to generate strategies, reasoning, and external behavior. At the same time, the cognitive model creates working interpretations of the environment and status of internal goals (situational awareness). Some of these interpretations and assessments feed into the connectionist model, which in turn continuously computes new values for each emotional attribute. Because the theory underpinning our model assumes that these responses were ultimate...

(Maximum 200 words):Report developed under a STTR contract number DASW01-99-C-0037 entitled Emotional Synthetic Forces. The objective of this research was to make the decision-making process of complex agents less predictable and more realistic, by incorporating emotional factors that affect humans. To this end, researchers adopted an approach that promotes the emergence of behavior as a result of complex interactions between factors affecting emotions, integrated in a connectionist-style model, and factors affecting decision making, represented in a symbolic model.This report explains the model sub-components, integration, and testing, which includes a description of the behaviors we used in the development of prototype, the design of experiments, a representative set of behavior patterns that emerged as a result of exercising the model over the design space, and recommendations for future work. Results of prototype suggest an effective means of increasing the variability of computer-generated forces (CGF) behavior in manner consistent with modern day emotional theories. SUBJECT TERMS FOREWORDComputer-Generated Forces (CGF) found in most current combat simulations act more lil