Emotional States and Realistic Agent Behaviour

In this paper we discuss some of the relations between cognition and emotion as exemplified by a particular type of agent architecture, the CogAff agent architecture. We outline a strategy for analysing cognitive and emotional states of agents along with the processes they can support, which effectively views cognitive and emotional states as architecture-dependent. We demonstrate this architecture-based research strategy with an example of a simulated multi-agent environment, where agents with different architectures have to compete for survival and show that simple affective states can be surprisingly effective in agent control under certain conditions. We conclude by proposing that such investigations will not only help us improve computer entertainments, but that explorations of alternative architectures in the context of computer games may also lead to important new insights in the attempt to understand natural intelligence and evolutionary trajectories.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: GAMEON
• Authors: Matthias Scheutz, Aaron Sloman, Brian Logan
• Keywords: Agent Architecture, CogAff Agent Architecture, Emotional States, GAMEON 2000, GAMEON 2007