text: Job interview simulation with a virtual agents aims at improving people's social skills and supporting professional inclusion. In such simulators, the virtual agent must be capable of representing and reasoning about the user's mental state based on social cues that inform the system about his her affects and social attitude. In this paper, we propose a formal model of Theory of Mind (ToM) for virtual agent in the context of human-agent interaction that focuses on the affective dimension. It relies on a hybrid ToM that combines the two major paradigms of the domain. Our framework is based on modal logic and inference rules about the mental states, emotions and social relations of both actors. Finally, we present preliminary results regarding the impact of such a model on natural interaction in the context of job interviews simulation.
  @cite_5: The question of the content of the book was more difficult. There is a vast range of topics which could be discussed under the heading of ‘philosophy of psychology’, and a great many different approaches to those topics could be taken. For scientific psychology is itself a very broad church, ranging from various forms of cognitive psychology, through artificial intelligence, social psychology, behavioural psychology, comparative psychology, neuro-psychology, psycho-pathology, and so on. And the philosopher of psychology might then take a variety of different approaches, ranging from one which engages with, and tries to contribute to, psychological debates (compare the way in which philosophers of physics may propose solutions to the hidden-variable problem); through an approach which attempts to tease out philosophical problems as they arise within psychology (compare the famous ‘under-labourer’ conception of the role of the philosopher of science); to an approach which focuses on problems which are raised for philosophy by the results and methods of psychology.
  @cite_27: People are minded creatures; we have thoughts, feelings and emotions. More intriguingly, we grasp our own mental states, and conduct the business of ascribing them to ourselves and others without instruction in formal psychology. How do we do this? And what are the dimensions of our grasp of the mental realm? In this book, Alvin I. Goldman explores these questions with the tools of philosophy, developmental psychology, social psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He refines an approach called simulation theory, which starts from the familiar idea that we understand others by putting ourselves in their mental shoes. Can this intuitive idea be rendered precise in a philosophically respectable manner, without allowing simulation to collapse into theorizing? Given a suitable definition, do empirical results support the notion that minds literally create (or attempt to create) surrogates of other peoples mental states in the process of mindreading? Goldman amasses a surprising array of evidence from psychology and neuroscience that supports this hypothesis.
  @cite_23: Abstract Human self-consciousness as the metarepresentation of ones own mental states and the so-called theory of mind (TOM) capacity, which requires the ability to model the mental states of others, are closely related higher cognitive functions. We address here the issue of whether taking the self-perspective (SELF) or modeling the mind of someone else (TOM) employ the same or differential neural mechanisms. A TOM paradigm was used and extended to include stimulus material that involved TOM and SELF capacities in a two-way factorial design. A behavioral study in 42 healthy volunteers showed that TOM and SELF induced differential states of mind: subjects assigned correctly first or third person pronouns when providing responses to the stimuli. Following the behavioral study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in eight healthy, right-handed males to study the common and differential neural mechanisms underlying TOM and SELF. The main factor TOM led to increased neural activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and left temporopolar cortex. The main factor SELF led to increased neural activity in the right temporopariet al junction and in the anterior cingulate cortex. A significant interaction of both factors TOM and SELF was observed in the right prefrontal cortex. These divergent neural activations in response to TOM and SELF suggest that these important differential mental capacities of human self-consciousness are implemented at least in part in distinct brain regions.
summary: From the philosophical point of view, a debate about how ToM is processed by human adults opposes two theories. The (TT) argues for a folk-psychology reasoning, i.e. a set of rules one acquires regarding human mind functioning. @cite_5 . The (ST) @cite_27 defends a mirroring or projection process allowing for taking someone else's perspective. Various research demonstrated that neither pure TT nor pure ST were realistic @cite_23 and both theorists and simulationists turn toward more hybrid models @cite_5 @cite_27 .