Multitasking in emotion modelling: Attention Control

The work described in this paper is about building a general model capable of simulating human behaviour and emotions using virtual characters. To make the simulation realistic enough, virtual characters need to express emotions according to the environment and deal with those emotions in a parallel way where an emotional experience can be triggered at the same time as another emotional response. The virtual character will have perceptions, feel and express emotions and respond to different situations. To make the simulation realistic, we used a method allowing the virtual characters to execute tasks, perceive events and display emotions in a parallel way. To do that, we used the multiple resources model [1] to control the attention and to predict when two or more actions can be executed at the same time. The used emotional model is based on Scherer´s theory [2]. However, in this paper we focus on the control of the attention as a part of the emotional process.