Emotion Recognition
About Educational Technology, edtech, education, emotions, psychology1 comment
Last night I was reading Wired News and I found an interesting double-surprise. The article is called Emotion-Recognition Software Knows What Makes You Smile. The article talks about a software able to read an interpret human facial expressions. The software creates a 3D map of the face based on 12 key areas. The expression is then mapped into six basic expression patterns (which resemble the basic emotions postulated by Paul Ekman): anger, sadness, fear, surprise, disgust and happiness or a mixture of them.
The software has powerful applications. Marketing and advertising are straightforward. But educational as well. It would give hints and feedback about the level of engagement and act accordingly. A step forward to emotional - affective computing. If combined, for instance with microsensors, the resuts would be impressive and scary at the same time.
The second surprise deals with one of the authors of the software: Nicu Sebe, from Amsterdam University. Nicu participate in last year’s ECSE Summer School in Novel Computing. He was giving a lecture about multimedia information systems. Although I did not assist to his lecture I had an very good impression of him: a very nice and pleasant guy.
The following morning I re-read Clint’s last post. Intriguing enough I wonder if it would be related with this topic somehow.
By Javier, July 17, 2007About Educational Technology, edtech, education, emotions, psychology
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Cool stuff you found Javier! You wondered if the advances in emotion-recognition software are related to decision automation. Although, according to my knowledge, they are not yet it is extremely likely that they will be in the future. For example, imagine using a webcam as you interact with a web site that uses a combination of emotion-recognition software and decision automation. The data collected by the emotion-recognition software would be included in the variables that are used to determine what your unique needs are in the moment, and consequently factor into what messages/ creatives are presented to you. In learning situations, it could not only help assess engagement, frustration, surprise, etc.. but also predict what reaction to which emotion in which moment would be the most helpful in achieving a positive end result. I think, if you can get past the creepy factor of how wise a computer could seem and ensure practices to not abuse these kinds of technologies, the possibilities are fascinating.
Comment by Clint — July 19, 2007 #