Transition of Aesthetic Emotions in Interactive Environments

With the rapid expansion in interactive environments, the need for more sophisticated cognitive models of aesthetic emotion transition is even more pressing for both academic and industrial applications. As part of our research to develop a model of aesthetic emotions and their patterns of transition, we have conducted two free report experiments concerning an interactive environment (a driving simulation), and have extracted and analyzed emotion words from collected verbal protocol data. In this research, we considered aesthetic emotions to be an overall configuration of cognitive components, and this configuration is a subjective experience of emotions, and thus of a state of mind. The results offer some insights into the mechanisms and structure of aesthetic emotions.