Affective Computing

So as I was reading chapter twelve, one section that caught my interest was affective computing.  What exactly is affective computing?  Affective computing is the result of persuasive evidence that exists for distinctive autonomic nervous system activity associated with fear, anger, disgust, and sadness. For example, with anger, there is increased heart rate and increased skin temperature which facilitate strong, assertive (adaptive) behavior.  With fear, heart rate increased while skin temperature decreased.  With disgust, both heart rate and skin temperature decreased.  With sadness, heart rate increased while skin temperature was stable. These four emotions, however, are among the few emotions with distinct autonomic nervous system reactions.  As Reeve states, "If no specific pattern of behavior has survival value for an emotion (like jealousy), there is little reason for the development of a specific pattern of autonomic nervous system activity." In other words, for jealousy and other emotions which don't fit distinct patterns, there is no universally appropriate bodily response because it depends on the situation more than it does on the emotion itself.  Thus, it is very unlikely that in the future humans will ever develop and evolve a single pattern of ANS activity for those emotions. 

STILL, for those emotions that show an ANS specific pattern (found through various studies) which I mentioned above (anger, fear, sadness, disgust, and additionally joy), there are future technological implications.  Essentially, it is possible that in the future we are going to be able to build machines that read our emotions.  As Reeve states, "Imagine electronic sensors built into steering wheels, mobile telephones, handles of bicycles, pilot simulators, computer joysticks, and golf clubs which constantly monitor its user's ANS (autonomic nervous system) arousal.  This would be the field of affective computing!  While these sensors would be limited in measuring only those basic emotions, additional technology like a digital camera or video camera could capture and analyze facial expressions and monitor movements of the user's face like the following features:  the user's frontalis, corrugators, orbiculris oculi, zygomaticus, nasalis, depressors, etc.  There is a great picture demonstrating faces of interest in our text after Tiger Woods hits a tee shot on page 341.  Computers already using technology analyzing user's facial muscles are actually already in existence, and are able to score facial movements just as accurate and actually faster than people. 

Here is a link which discusses affective computing and past, present, and future research projects regarding the technology:

http://affect.media.mit.edu/

Here is quick excerpt from the link:

Affective Computing is computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotion or other affective phenomena.

Emotion is fundamental to human experience, influencing cognition, perception, and everyday tasks such as learning, communication, and even rational decision-making. However, technologists have largely ignored emotion and created an often frustrating experience for people, in part because affect has been misunderstood and hard to measure. Our research develops new technologies and theories that advance basic understanding of affect and its role in human experience. We aim to restore a proper balance between emotion and cognition in the design of technologies for addressing human needs.

Our research has contributed to: (1) Designing new ways for people to communicate affective-cognitive states, especially through creation of novel wearable sensors and new machine learning algorithms that jointly analyze multimodal channels of information; (2) Creating new techniques to assess frustration, stress, and mood indirectly, through natural interaction and conversation; (3) Showing how computers can be more emotionally intelligent, especially responding to a person's frustration in a way that reduces negative feelings; (4) Inventing personal technologies for improving self-awareness of affective state and its selective communication to others; (5) Increasing understanding of how affect influences personal health; and (6) Pioneering studies examining ethical issues in affective computing.

 

Will these technologies actually come into play in the near future?  Who knows, but if they do, they will revolutionize seemingly every field of business, sport, and life.  Would this necessarily be a progressive adaptation within our culture? Definitely an interesting topic to consider...