Although we feel this approach has merit, it will need empirical evidence to show its worth. Early implementation efforts are currently underway to integrate affective reasoning in STEVE out of the Information Sciences Institute [Rickel & Johnson1997]. In this exercise a slimmed-down version of the Affective Reasoner's full emotion set is being implmented in Soar. Preliminary design discussions are underway with the Multimedia Laboratory at North Carolina State University for integrating affective reasoning into the Design-A-Plant and Protocol Advisor System projects [Lester & Stone1997]. Related efforts at using the Affective Reasoner's expressive capabilities as tutoring feedback devices are underway at DePaul university. (And see also [Elliott, Rickel, & Lester1997].)
In this brief paper we suggest that there is much fertile ground to be explored by using the extant capabilities of Affective Reasoner agents in the tutoring paradigm. We argue that social complexity, including complexity in the user interface, can be utilized without loss of coherence, and that this allows us to support the computer implementation of many qualities that good teachers exhibit.
Figure: Emotion types.
[* Require additional information, but are sometimes necessary.]