Pat: an Pedagogical and Affective Tutor

Resumo: This paper presents the architecture of a lifelike and emotional pedagogical agent, called Pat, which has the goal of inferring the student's emotions and applying affective tactics in order to adapt the educational environment to the student¿s emotions, motivate him and promote a positive mood into the student, which fosters learning. Pat attempts to promote more positive feelings into the student by presenting emotional animated attitudes and encouragement messages which are chosen dynamically to compose its affective tactics. In order to accomplish this goal, its architecture is composed by two main modules: the brain that is responsible for inferring student's emotions and choosing the affective tactics, and the body that, given a affective tactic sent by the mind, selects and present dynamically the attitudes and speech that compose it. This paper also presents an evaluation of Pat¿s affective tactics accomplished by teachers and pedagogues.

Abstract: This paper presents the architecture of a lifelike and emotional pedagogical agent, called Pat, which has the goal of inferring the student's emotions and applying affective tactics in order to adapt the educational environment to the student¿s emotions, motivate him and promote a positive mood into the student, which fosters learning. Pat attempts to promote more positive feelings into the student by presenting emotional animated attitudes and encouragement messages which are chosen dynamically to compose its affective tactics. In order to accomplish this goal, its architecture is composed by two main modules: the brain that is responsible for inferring student's emotions and choosing the affective tactics, and the body that, given a affective tactic sent by the mind, selects and present dynamically the attitudes and speech that compose it. This paper also presents an evaluation of Pat¿s affective tactics accomplished by teachers and pedagogues.

2007