Symposium on Affective Language in Human and Machine
AISB 2008 Convention
(AISB web site mirror here)
1st-2nd
April 2008,
University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland
Background and Goals
The increasing awareness in HCI of the importance of considering emotions and other non-rational aspects of the human mind in computer interfaces has led to a recent surge of interest in the area known as Affective Computing. Potential applications of Affective Computing arise in areas such as healthcare and tutoring. Designing for affect also naturally arises in the development of embodied conversational agents. There are many significant unsolved problems in this area, including the modelling of emotions themselves (in terms of diagnosis and prediction) and the design of specialised hardware to facilitate the measurement or expression of affective state.This symposium concentrates particularly on the ways in which emotion is communicated between humans through their written and spoken language. These ways may or may not suggest ways in which emotions might be communicated between humans and machines. Theories of language frequently ignore the fact that this system of communication has evolved as much for the expression and recognition of emotional state as for the conveying of factual information. The corresponding parts of AI, speech and natural language processing are only gradually waking up to the possibilities and challenges that the wider perspective opens up. This is reflected in the fact that, although there are general conferences in Affective Computing and Intelligent User Interfaces there is not yet a specialised forum for researchers to discuss how these issues relate to language.
In the symposium we particularly wish to consider the relation between recent advances in Psychology and Cognition and the implementations of Affective Computing that are beginning to emerge. How can knowledge of the ways that people express emotions to one another help to inform the development of affectively sensitive and effective computer interfaces using language?
The symposium will take place on 1st-2nd April 2008. Apart from the talks in which the participants present their work there will also be discussions (plenary, as well as in smaller groups on topics determined beforehand). We are also hoping to invite one or two invited speakers.
***NEWS*** Draft programme now available!