Modeling Expectations in cognitive agents

A crucial feature of intelligent agents is their being proactive not only reactive, their anticipatory representations i.e., their ability to deal with the future by mental representations or specific forms of learning. For guiding and orienting the action a representation of the future and more precisely a representation of future effects and of intermediate results of the action is needed. Have a mind means to have anticipatory representations, i.e., predictions and goals; not just perception, beliefs, memory. The aim of this work is to provide a precise characterization of anticipatory mental states (i.e. Expectations), to analyze their role in the generation of Surprise, Relief and Disappointment and to discuss their function in the definition of Social Trust.