StartleCam is a wearable video camera, computer, and sensing system, which enables the camera to be controlled via both conscious and preconscious events involving the wearer. Traditionally, a wearer consciously hits record on the video camera, or runs a computer script to trigger the camera according to some pre-specified frequency. The system described here offers an additional option: images are saved by the system when it detects certain events of supposed interest to the wearer. The implementation described here aims to capture events that are likely to get the user's attention and to be remembered. Attention and memory are highly correlated with what psychologists call arousal level, and the latter is often signaled by skin conductivity changes; consequently, StartleCam monitors the wearer's skin conductivity. StartleCam looks for patterns indicative of a "startle response" in the skin conductivity signal. When this response is detected, a buffer of digital images, recently captured by the wearer's digital camera, is downloaded and optionally transmitted wirelessly to a webserver. This selective storage of digital images creates a "flashbulb" memory archive for the wearable which aims to mimic the wearer' Using a startle detection filter, the StartleCam system has been demonstrated to work on several wearers in both indoor and outdoor ambulatory environments.

Abstract not found

An "affective wearable" is a wearable system equipped with sensors and tools which enables recognition of its wearer's affective patterns. Affective patterns include expressions of emotion such as a joyful smile, an angry gesture, a strained voice or a change in autonomic nervous system activity such as accelerated heart rate or increasing skin conductivity. This paper describes new applications of affective wearables, and presents a prototype which gathers physiological signals and their annotations from its wearer. Results of preliminary experiments of its performance are reported for a user wearing four different sensors and engaging in several natural activities. 1 Introduction: Why affective wearables? One of the distinguishing features of wearable computers, as opposed to merely portable computers, is that they can be in physical contact with you in a long-term intimate way. A wearable may not just hang on your belt, but it may also reside in your shoes, hat, gloves, jewelry, o...

Emerging technologies offer new ways of using entertainment technology to foster interactions between players and connect people. Evaluating collaborative entertainment technology is challenging because success is not defined in terms of productivity and performance, but in terms of enjoyment and interaction. Current subjective methods are not sufficiently robust in this context. This paper describes an experiment designed to test the efficacy of physiological measures as evaluators of collaborative entertainment technologies. We found evidence that there is a different physiological response in the body when playing against a computer versus playing against a friend. These physiological results are mirrored in the subjective reports provided by the participants. We provide an initial step towards using physiological responses to objectively evaluate a user’s experience with collaborative entertainment technology.

This article opens by noting that positive emotions do not fit existing models of emotions. Consequently, a new model is advanced to describe the form and function of a subset of positive emotions, including joy, interest, contentment, and love. This new model posits that these positive emotions serve to broaden an individual's momentary thought-action repertoire, which in turn has the effect of building that individual's physical, intellectual, and social resources. Empirical evidence to support this broaden-and-build model of positive emotions is reviewed, and implications for emotion regulation and health promotion are discussed. Even though research on emotions has this new perspective are featured. My hope is flourished in recent years, investigations that that this article will unlock scientific curiosity expressly target positive emotions remain few about positive emotions, not only to test the and far between. Any review of the psychologi- ideas presented here, but also to build other new cal literature on emotions will show that models that might illuminate the nature and psychologists have typically favored negative value of positive emotions. Psychology sorely emotions in theory building and hypothesis needs more studies on positive emotions, not testing. In so doing, psychologists have inadver- simply to level the uneven knowledge bases tently marginalized the emotions, such as joy, between negative and positive emotions, but interest, contentment, and love, that share a more critically, to guide applications and pleasant subjective feel. To date, then, psycholo- interventions that might improve individual and gy's knowledge base regarding positive emo- collective functioning, psychological welltions is so thin that satisfying answers to the question "What good are positive emotions?" have yet to be articulated. This is unfortunate. being, and physical health. Experiences of positive emotion are central to Why Have Positive Emotions human nature and contribute richly to the quality of people's lives (Diener & Larsen, Been Marginalized? 1993; Myers & Diener, 1995). But how? In At this point, it might be useful to inspect

Researchers are using emerging technologies to develop novel play environments, while established computer and console game markets continue to grow rapidly. Even so, evaluating the success of interactive play environments is still an open research challenge. Both subjective and objective techniques fall short due to limited evaluative bandwidth; there remains no corollary in play environments to task performance with productivity systems. This paper presents a method of modeling user emotional state, based on a user’s physiology, for users interacting with play technologies. Modeled emotions are powerful because they capture usability and playability through metrics relevant to ludic experience; account for user emotion; are quantitative and objective; and are represented continuously over a session. Furthermore, our modeled emotions show the same trends as reported emotions for fun, boredom, and excitement; however, the modeled emotions revealed differences between three play conditions, while the differences between the subjective reports failed to reach significance.

this paper is to attempt to bring together people, results and questions from these three different disciplines -- HCI, AI, and Cognitive Science -- to explore the potential of building computer interfaces which understand and respond to the richness of the information conveyed in the human face. Until recently, information has been conveyed from the computer to the user mainly via the visual channel, whereas inputs from the user to the computer have been made from the keyboard and pointing devices via the user's motor channel. The recent emergence of multimodal interfaces as our everyday tools might restore a better balance between our physiology and sensory/motor skills, and impact (for the better we hope), the richness of activities we will find ourselves involved in. Given recent progress in user-interface primitives composed of gesture, speech, context and affect, it seems feasible to design environments which do not impose themselves as computer environments, but have a much more natural feeling associated with them.

This article develops the hypothesis that intervention strategies that cultivate positive emotions are particularly suited for preventing and treating problems rooted in negative emotions, such as anxiety, depression, aggression, and stressrelated health problems. Fredrickson's (1998) broaden–and–build model of positive emotions provides the foundation for this application. According to this model, the form and function of positive and negative emotions are distinct and complementary. Negative emotions (e.g., fear, anger, and sadness) narrow an individual's momentary thought–action repertoire toward specific actions that served the ancestral function of promoting survival. By contrast, positive emotions (e.g., joy, interest, and contentment) broaden an individual's momentary thought–action repertoire, which in turn can build that individual's enduring personal resources, resources that also served the ancestral function of promoting survival. One implication of the broaden–and–build model is that positive emotions have an undoing effect on negative emotions. By broadening

Abstract. With the growing importance of information technology in our everydaylife, new types of applications are appearing that require the understanding of information in a broad sense. Information that includes affective and subjective content plays a major role not only in an individual’s cognitive processes but also in an individual’s interaction with others. We identify three key points to be considered when developing systems that capture affective information: embodiment (experiencing physical reality), dynamics (mapping experience and emotional state with its label) and adaptive interaction (conveying emotive response, responding to a recognized emotional state).We present two computational systems that implement those principles: MOUE (Model Of User Emotions) is an emotion recognition system that recognizes the user’s emotion from his/her facial expressions, and from it, adaptively builds semantic de¢nitions of emotion concepts using the user’s feedback; MIKE (Multimedia Interactive Environment for Kansei communication) is an interactive adaptive system that, along with the user, co-evolves a language for communicating over subjective impressions.

Emotion generation for an artificial agent aspire to give computers some level of understanding about what it might be like to have affective states. Generating states for a computer system with similar properties and/or functions to human emotion, might be one of the first steps in building such an understanding. We propose a computational design for modeling affect generation using a hybrid architecture which implements both the physiological and the subjective experience components associated with emotion. Introduction The present article proposes research directions to develop computational systems capable of having emotion-like states. Although contemporary psychology regards emotional and cognitive processes as strongly intertwined, research about them is still mostly conducted within two separate conceptual frameworks. Indeed, while most emotion theories assume that emotional processes are the result of cognitive processes (Schachter and Singer, 1962; Mandler, 1975),...