Introduction to the special issue on computational modelling of emotion

The papers in this special issue focus on computational modeling of emotion recognition. Emotions play a pervasive role in personal, social, and professional life. As artificially intelligent systems become pervasive in our lives, it is important that these systems are able to understand emotion in humans and simulate the function of emotion to be effective in their interactions with people. Computational models of emotion contribute towards this goal by, on the one hand, serving as a means to test emotion theories and help understand the function of emotion and, on the other, as the end in itself by simulating appropriate emotion and its downstream consequences – such as expressions of emotion – in computational agents. This special issue presents a critical overview of this cross-disciplinary field, with contributions from some of the leading scholars in cognitive psychology and affective computing, focusing both on theory and practice.