The traditional efforts to mimic basic human behavior in embodied agents use an approach that draws a clear line between the “mind” and the “body” of those agents. However, recent findings in neuroscience show that our bodies have an active role in what we call “intelligence”. We studied several processes related with our body and propose a model to integrate them in generic embodied agents. Th...

In this paper we survey the role of humor in human-to-human interaction with the aim to see whether it is useful for embodied conversational agents to integrate humor capabilities in their internal model of intelligence, emotions and interaction (verbal and nonverbal) capabilities. For that reason we shortly survey the current state of the art of research in embodied conversational agents, affe...

In this article, we present ongoing research, EMO, an affective embodied conversational agent platform, aimed at depicting multi-ethnic, multi-modal communication patterns in a credible manner. We employ the methodology of integrating counseling concepts early in the design to effectively target a specific domain. The system is geared to augment solution focused therapy. We present a prototype ...

1 Abstract The paper presents an investigation into the question how a specification of the behaviour of Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) can be grounded in empirical investigations of human c onversational behaviour. We consider various empirical approaches and discuss one particular approach based on Dialogue Games in detail. We identify some pitfalls and problems which one faces when tr...

In this paper I discuss in which conditions a population of embodied and situated agents that have to solve problems that requires cooperation might develop forms of ritualized interaction and communication. After reviewing the most relevant literature I will try to identify the the main open research problems and the most promising research directions. More specifially I will discuss: (a) the ...

In this chapter we introduce the area of research that attempts to study the evolution of communication in embodied agents through adaptive techniques, such us artificial evolution. More specifically, we illustrate the theoretical assumptions behind this type of research, we present the methods that can be used to realize embodied and communicating artificial agents, and we discuss the main res...

This paper presents an experiment that evaluates and compares the user enjoyment when playing a game of chess in two situations: against a physically embodied robotic agent and against a virtually embodied agent, displayed on screen. The results of the study suggest that embodiment has implications on user enjoyment, as the experience against a robotic agent was classified as more enjoyable tha...

This essay proposes and defends a pluralistic theory of conceptual embodiment. Our concepts are represented in at least two ways: (i) through sensorimotor simulations of our interactions with objects and events and (ii) through sensorimotor simulations of natural language processing. Linguistic representations are "dis-embodied" in the sense that they are dynamic and multimodal but, in contrast...

There is a tension between the embodied approach to cognition (e.g., Varela et al., 1991; Anderson, 2003; Wilson and Foglia, 2011; Myachykov et al., 2014) and the neurocentric way of thinking. It manifests in the research on mirror neurons (Caramazza et al., 2014), action language understanding (Meteyard et al., 2012), or decisionmaking (Kubanek and Snyder, 2015), to mention just a few examples...

In this programmatic paper we explain why a radical embodied cognitive neuroscience is needed. We argue for such a claim based on problems that have arisen in cognitive neuroscience for the project of localizing function to specific brain structures. The problems come from research concerned with functional and structural connectivity that strongly suggests that the function a brain region serv...