Unifying Emotion and Cognition: The Flow Model Approach

May 2004

Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2004)

Volume

Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2004)

All Papers

Growing experimental evidence shows the fundamental role that emotion plays in intelligent behavior as well as the close relationship between emotion and what is classically known as cognition. Due to this evidence different models have been proposed to support emotion in artificial agents. However, the classical separation between emotion and cognition still prevails, not favoring the definition of a general framework to support the implementation of emotional agents. In this paper we present a model that unifies emotion and cognition as two symbiotically integrated aspects of intelligent behavior. Despite being inspired by biological processes, the proposed model is independent of specific physiological or psychological details in order to support the implementation of concrete agents of different kinds and levels of complexity.