When goals collide: Monitoring the goals of multiple characters

When goals collide: monitoring the goals of multiple characters.

Most story plots contain multiple characters who are independent, interact, and often have conflicting goals. One would expect that narrative understanding would require monitoring of the goals, concerns, and situations of multiple agents. There is considerable evidence that understanders monitor the primary protagonist's goal plans (e.g., Suh & Trabasso, 1993). However, there is relatively lit...

Monitoring Goals With Aspects

Software systems are built based on assumptions about the environment in which they will operate. Change in the environment can therefore result in failures of the system which cannot easily be anticipated. Runtime requirements monitoring confirms, as a system operates, that it is satisfying the requirements specified for it. Requirements monitoring as part of the normal operation of a system a...

Design Goals for Autonomous Synthetic Characters

Departures From Optimality When Pursuing Multiple Approach or Avoidance Goals

This article examines how people depart from optimality during multiple-goal pursuit. The authors operationalized optimality using dynamic programming, which is a mathematical model used to calculate expected value in multistage decisions. Drawing on prospect theory, they predicted that people are risk-averse when pursuing approach goals and are therefore more likely to prioritize the goal in t...

Being effective when suspending goals*

In their everyday lives people flexibly handle many tasks. They work on one at a time, make quick decisions about which one to work on, and put aside tasks whenever attending to them is not required to achieve the task’s goal. This last capability is critical because rather than fixate on a blocked task, a person can work on some other task. For example, a person making bean soup wouldn’t watch...