A logical formalization of the OCC theory of emotions

In this paper, we provide a logical formalization of the emotion triggering process and of its relationship with mental attitudes, as described in Ortony, Clore, and Collins’s theory. We argue that modal logics are particularly adapted to represent agents’ mental attitudes and to reason about them, and use a specific modal logic that we call Logic of Emotions in order to provide logical definitions of all but two of their 22 emotions. While these definitions may be subject to debate, we show that they allow to reason about emotions and to draw interesting conclusions from the theory.     

ABC-EBDI: An affective framework for BDI agents

The aim of this work is to improve the modelling of intelligent agents that reproduce realistic human behavior. BDI frameworks have been successfully used in this context and have evolved in recent years into EBDI frameworks, in which affective aspects are considered. In this work, an affective EBDI framework named ABC-EBDI is presented. The proposal integrates a well-known psychotherapeutic model, the ABC model, combined with other affective theories, to support the modeling of the agents’ behavioral and affective responses in a unifying and realistic manner. The distinguishing feature of the proposed framework is the classification of the agent’s cognitive-affective process as either rational or irrational. This process will lead to functional emotions and adaptive conduct in the first case and dysfunctional emotions and maladaptive behaviors in the second. The framework models affect by taking into account emotions, mood and personality. It also models human conduct regarding not only actions, but also the way those actions are expressed. A prototype has been implemented based on a bad news scenario and a first evaluation with users has been carried out with promising results.     

Towards a theory of intention revision

Although the change of beliefs in the face of new information has been widely studied with some success, the revision of other mental states has received little attention from the theoretical perspective. In particular, intentions are widely recognised as being a key attitude for rational agents, and while several formal theories of intention have been proposed in the literature, the logic of intention revision has been hardly considered. There are several reasons for this: perhaps most importantly, intentions are very closely connected with other mental states—in particular, beliefs about the future and the abilities of the agent. So, we cannot study them in isolation. We must consider the interplay between intention revision and the revision of other mental states, which complicates the picture considerably. In this paper, we present some first steps towards a theory of intention revision. We develop a simple model of an agent’s mental states, and define intention revision operators. Using this model, we develop a logic of intention dynamics, and then investigate some of its properties.