er.sagepub.com Latent and Emergent Models in Affective Computing

New research on affective computing aiming to develop computer systems that recognize and respond to affective states can also contribute to the issues raised by Coan. Research on how humans interact with computers, and computer models that automatically recognize affective states from features in our physiology, behaviour, and language, may provide insights on how emotions that are experienced and expressed come to be. For example, there is empirical evidence that affect recognition techniques using several modalities are more accurate than those using a single modal-ity, but it is not clear if these improvements are caused by superadditivity (i.e., emergence) or redundancy. Keywords affective computing, affective states, computer models In Coan’s (2010) discussion of latent and emergent models he notes the recent growth of the area of emotion research, wit