Emotions and Sociality in Human-Technology Interaction, 5 cr

This course consists of a series of lectures, reading assignments, and discussions about basic concepts of human social and emotional processes, and how this knowledge informs the development of affective computing – a branch of HTI about digital technology with multimodal emotion analysis and adaptive interaction. The course focuses specifically on non-verbal communication, neural and biological basis of communication and emotions, interconnections between emotions, cognition, and motivation - and illustrates how an understanding of these processes can be applied to improve interaction design and user experience.

Topics to be covered in the course include (but not limited to):

· Emotion theories, Emotion modelling

· Psychophysiological basis of emotional processing

· Emotion – cognition - motivation interconnections, Emotional intelligence

· Non-verbal behavior, prosocial behavior, empathy

· Automatic emotion/affect recognition

· Anthropomorphism

· Theory of social response, computers as social actors (CASA)-model principles

· Embodied conversational agents

· Imitation and humanoid robots

· Ethics in affective computing

The course offers a window that cross-travels between psychology, engineering, affective and physiological computing, social robotics, etc.