If agents are going to interact socially with humans, they can not be simply correct; they must also be comprehensible. This article describes my thesis work-in-progress, which focuseson designingagents that caneffectively expressto users the goals and activities their designer has chosen for them. In order to build agents that express clearly the intentions of their designers, I am creating to...

We briefly consider thae nature of a social agent, snmmarise work carried out at Salford, and consider the communication requirements for different levels of socila organisation. We examine the ngineering implications for robot experienmts of these communication requirements. What are social agents? We consider social agents in general to be those involved in interaction between same species in...

The development of smart cities has been the epicentre of many researchers' efforts during the past decade. One of the key requirements for smart city networks is mobility and this is the reason stable, reliable and high-quality wireless communications are needed in order to connect people and devices. Most research efforts so far, have used different kinds of wireless and sensor networks, maki...

Virtual companions that interact with users in a socially complex environment require a wide range of social skills. Displaying curiosity is simultaneously a factor to improve a companion’s believability and to unobtrusively affect the user’s activities over time. Curiosity represents a drive to know new things. It is a major driving force for engaging learners in active learning. Existing rese...

Imagine an agent who is charged with seeking information from around the globe. It is the task of this agent to visit different sites, to search for information, and to report back to its 'superior' (which may or may not be human). In the course of this search, it will interact with others, human or otherwise. It will make decisions about the situations it finds itself in, based on, for example...

We review socially biased learning about food and problem solving in monkeys, relying especially on studies with tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and callitrichid monkeys. Capuchin monkeys most effectively learn to solve a new problem when they can act jointly with an experienced partner in a socially tolerant setting and when the problem can be solved by direct action on an object or sub...

In two studies, we examined the relationship between self-aspects and socially engaging and socially disengaging emotions elicited by imagined and real physical health problems. In Study 1, participants imagined themselves experiencing a health problem described in a hypothetical scenario and rated the extent to which they would experience a list of emotions. The experience of socially engaging...

This study investigated the quality of metacognition at its inter-individual level, i.e., socially-shared metacognition, across two collaborative writing tasks of different difficulty levels among a cohort of Iranian EFL learners.  Moreover, it examined the correlation between the individual and the social modes of metacognition in writing.  The analysis of think-aloud protocols of a number of ...

Using Rawls's theory of justice, this paper addresses the empirical question of whether the socially responsible market economy can help explain the current situation in financial freedom, as well as its recent variation across countries. Utilizing annual data from selected countries of Middle East, North Africa, Asia and Oceania, and static panel estimation techniques, we provide evidence whic...

Although social withdrawal is a prominent symptom of sickness, the mechanisms associated with this behavioral change remain unclear. In animals, the amygdala is a key neural region involved in sickness-induced social withdrawal. Consistent with this, in humans, heightened amygdala activity to negative social cues is associated with social avoidance tendencies. Based on these findings, we invest...