The Emotion Research Group at the University of Geneva announces the third Geneva Emotion Week (GEW '95), consisting of:
·   a colloquium focusing on a major topic in the psychology of emotion (3 days)
·   a series of workshops designed to introduce participants to advanced research methods in the field of emotion (3 days).

The colloquium consists of extensive presentations of theoretical and methodological approaches and of recent empirical work by a group of invited speakers and faculty members of the University of Geneva. Ample time is allotted for discussion. The theme chosen for the GEW'95 is:

The intention of GEW'95 is to bring together researchers from diverse disciplines, including AI, neurosciences, philosophy, and psychology, who share an interest in architectures and mechanisms underlying emotion, motivation, and intelligence. The focus is on architectural requirements for an autonomous agent, combining the various sub-functions and sub-mechanisms normally studied separately in AI and Psychology. GEW'95 is organized in collaboration with the Cognition and Affect Group under the direction of Prof. Aaron Sloman at the Cognitive Science Research Center, University of Birmingham. This group organized the first Workshop on Architectures underlying Motivation and Emotion (WAUME93) at Birmingham and is pleased that WAUME95 is to be merged with GEW'95.

Speakers and Topics of the colloquium:

Prof. Joseph Le Doux, Univ. New York: Neural Computation of Emotional Meaning by the Brain.

Prof. Stevan Harnad, Univ. Southampton: Measuring and Modelling Performance Capacities and Qualitative States.

Prof. Aaron Sloman, Univ. Birmingham: Architectures for Emotional Agents.

Prof. Klaus Scherer, Univ. Genève: Computer Modeling of Appraisal Processes.

Discussant: Prof. Nico Frijda, Univ. Amsterdam.

The workshops will be dedicated to practical work, e.g. simulation models, tools, problems, etc. The workshops listed below will be held by the organizers and the invited speakers. In addition, 2 or 3 workshops (of 1.5 to 3 hours) will be held by participants. Proposals for workshops will be selected on a competitive basis. Each day of the workshops will end with a session (2h) for posters, demonstrations, videos, and individual discussions. The topics of the invited workshops, each lasting approximately 3 hours, are:

Dr. Jorge Armony, Center for Neuroscience, New York:

• An Anatomically Constrained Connectionist Model of Fear Conditioning.

• Turing Testing and the Causal Status of Affect.

• Exploring Motivated Agent Design.

• Simulating Facial Expressions and Phonemes for Virtual Humans.

• Computational Models: Open Issues.

• A Psychological Modeling Environment for Autonomous Agents.

Deadline for workshop proposals: December 31, 1994

Deadline for applications: February 15, 1995