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6 Socially Intelligent Agentsthe agent to develop an identity which is intimately suited to interaction withthat particular human. This, according to the author may be the only way toachieve the quality of relationship needed. In order to understand such a process,the author draws upon current ideas of the human self and its ontogeneticformation. He articulates a model of the construction of a self by an agent, ininteraction with users.In chapter 5, Katherine Isbister discusses the use of nonverbal social cuesin social relationships. Spatial proximity, orientation and posture can communicatesocial intention and relationship, such as agreement or independenceamong agents. Facial expressions and hand, head and body gestures can indicateattitude and emotional response such as approval or uncertainty. Spatialpointing and eye gaze can be used to indicate subjects of discussion. Timing,rhythm and emphasis contribute to prosody and the management of conversationalinteraction. Her practical work concerns the development of interfaceagents whose purpose is to facilitate human-human social interaction. She reportson her experience in two projects, a helper agent and a tour guide agent.2.2 Agents and Emotions/PersonalityEmotion is key in human social activity, and the use of computers and robotsis no exception. Agents that can recognize a user’s emotions, display meaningfulemotional expressions, and behave in ways that are perceived as coherent,intentional, responsive, and socially/emotionally appropriate, can make importantcontributions towards achieving human-computer interaction that is more‘natural’, believable, and enjoyable to the human partner. Endowing social artifactswith aspects of personality and emotions is relevant in a wide range ofpractical contexts, in particular when (human) trust and sympathetic evaluationare needed, as in education, therapy, decision making, or decision support, toname only a few.Believability, understandability, and the problem of realism are major issuesaddressed in the first three chapters of this section, all of them concerned withdifferent aspects of how to design (social) artifacts’ emotional displays andbehavior in a way that is adapted to, and recognizable by humans. The fourthchapter addresses the converse problem: how to build agents that are able torecognize human emotions, in this case from vocal cues.In chapter 6, Eva Hudlicka presents the ABAIS adaptive user interface system,capable of recognizing and adapting to the user’s affective and beliefstates. Based on an adaptive methodology designed to compensate for performancebiases caused by users’ affective states and active beliefs, ABAISprovides a generic framework for exploring a variety of user affect assessmentmethods and GUI adaptation strategies. The particular application discussedin this chapter is a prototype implemented and demonstrated in the context of