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<Paper uid="W06-0307">
  <Title>Exploitation in Affect Detection in Open-Ended Improvisational Text</Title>
  <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="47" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
1 Introduction
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Improvised drama and role-play are widely used in education, counselling and conflict resolution.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Researchers have explored frameworks for edrama, in which virtual characters (avatars) interact under the control of human actors. The springboard for our research is an existing system (edrama) created by one of our industrial partners, Hi8us Midlands, used in schools for creative writing and teaching in various subjects.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> The experience suggests that e-drama helps students lose their usual inhibitions, because of anonymity etc. In edrama, characters are completely human-controlled, their speeches textual in speech bubbles, and their visual forms cartoon figures. The actors (users) are given a loose scenario within which to improvise, but are at liberty to be creative. There is also a human director, who constantly monitors the unfolding drama and can intervene by, for example, sending messages to actors, or by introducing and controlling a minor 'bit-part' character to interact with the main characters. But this places a heavy burden on directors, especially if they are, for example, teachers and unpracticed in the directorial role. One research aim is thus partially to automate the directorial functions, which importantly involve affect detection. For instance, a director may intervene when emotions expressed or discussed by characters are not as expected. Hence we have developed an affect-detection module. It has not yet actually been used for direction, but instead to control an automated bit-part actor, EMMA (emotion, metaphor and affect). The module identifies affect in characters' speeches, and makes appropriate responses to help stimulate the improvisation. Within affect we include: basic and complex emotions such as anger and embarrassment; meta-emotions such as desiring to overcome anxiety; moods such as hostility; and value judgments (of goodness, etc.).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Although merely detecting affect is limited compared to extracting full meaning, this is often enough for stimulating improvisation.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> Much research has been done on creating affective virtual characters in interactive systems. Indeed, Picard's work (2000) makes great contributions to building affective virtual characters. Also, emotion theories, particularly that of Ortony, et al. (1988) (OCC), have been used widely therein. Egges et al. (2003) have provided virtual characters with conversational emotional responsiveness. However, few systems are aimed at detecting affect as broadly as we do and in open-ended utterances. Although Facade (Mateas, 2002) included processing of open-ended utterances, the broad detection of emotions, rudeness and value judgements is not covered. Zhe &amp; Boucouvalas (2002) demonstrated emotion extraction using a tagger and a chunker to help detect the speaker's own emotions. But it focuses only on emotional adjectives, considers only  first-person emotions and neglects deep issues such as figurative expression. Our work is distinctive in several respects. Our interest is not just in (a) the positive first-person case: the affective states that a virtual character X implies that it has (or had or will have, etc.), but also in (b) affect that X implies it lacks, (c) affect that X implies that other characters have or lack, and (d) questions, commands, injunctions, etc. concerning affect. We aim also for the software to cope partially with the important case of metaphorical conveyance of affect (Fussell &amp; Moss, 1998; Kovecses, 1998).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> Our project does not involve using or developing deep, scientific models of how emotional states, etc., function in cognition. Instead, the deep questions investigated are on linguistic matters such as the metaphorical expression of affect. Also, in studying how people understand and talk about affect, what is of prime importance is their common-sense views of how affect works, irrespective of scientific reality. Metaphor is strongly involved in such views.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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