
Azizi Ab AzizNorthern University of Malaysia | UUM · STEM Academy
Azizi Ab Aziz
Ph.D Artificial Intelligence & Cognitive Science (VU Amsterdam)
AI science communicator, social AI, social robotics, agent-based modeling. Teaching- AI, Machine Learning, Simulations
About
88
Publications
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Introduction
Dr Azizi Ab Aziz directs a Relational Machines Group at Human Centred Computing Group, Universiti Utara Malaysia. His research interests are modeling dynamics of (multi) agent & robotic systems in practical application areas, such as social simulation, agents and cognitive robotics. In addition, he serves on several conference programme committees as a reviewer in the areas of cognitive agents, social simulation, artificial intelligence, and multi-agent systems.
Additional affiliations
January 2012 - October 2015
January 2008 - February 2012
January 1999 - December 2001
Education
January 2008 - December 2011
December 2001 - March 2003
July 1996 - August 1999
Publications
Publications (88)
This paper presents formal recipient model of support seeking behavior. Support seeking is significantly dynamic and it includes substantial changes as demanding condition happen. From this perspective, the proposed model covers integrating of both coping strategies, support preferences and network ties. The recipient model can be used to recognize...
Telecentre effectiveness is highly related with involvement of people in the community and has been measured by the socio-economic benefit gained from the telecentre. One of the important aspects that are often overlooked in the assessment of telecentre effectiveness is the technological change. It is referred to as the overall process of continuou...
School disengagement is one of the pressing topics for educational equity in many countries worldwide, which will lead to school dropout. Dropping out of school has adverse consequences, including negative effects on employment, lifetime earnings, and physical health. Several attempts have been made to solve engagement issues, for example, the deve...
Integrating human factors and social agents is essential for developing effective and efficient human-AI collaboration systems. Human factors can help ensure that AI systems are compatible with human cognitive and social capabilities, while social agents can help bridge the gap between human and machine communication. This paper reviews the literat...
The Recommender System (RS) has become an important area of research in recent years, not only because it allows people to find related products and services but because it has also expanded the research area on recommending human relationships, known as the Social Recommender System (SRS). Successful application of recommended system algorithms re...
Many years back, robots were fundamentally designed and separated from the human environment to prevent humans from getting too close and to eliminate possible risks. However, now some technologies are being made available for humans to work closely in the same area as robots. These robots are likely to operate as substitute humans / experts, where...
For socially intelligent agents to become a fully digital therapist to support individual with mental health problem in the future, they need to know how to socially interact with humans. One of the key ingredients to allow this skill to take place is an ability to exhibit empathic behaviours. Despite a number of socially intelligent agents were bu...
This paper presents a computational analysis of human–robot working alliance trust with behaviour change intervention domain. The model can be used as a trust evaluation module that supports robot-based therapy in maintaining trust human trust towards robots. Simulation experiments under various parameter settings indicated that the model could gen...
Community cohesion is a broad concept that commonly connotes better relationships among people of different backgrounds. It has resulted in long-term interactions amongst the participating community members, commonly in the physical community. The relationships among agents were represented as a conceptual model for virtual community cohesion, and...
Social support is often labelled as a critical component of solid relationships and vital psychological health. It involves having a network of family and friends that persons can turn to in times of need. Scientific study has also shown the link between social relationships and several health and wellness aspects where poor social support has been...
Social support is often labelled as a critical component of solid relationships and vital psychological health. It involves having a network of family and friends that persons can turn to in times of need. Scientific study has also shown the link between social relationships and several health and wellness aspects where poor social support has been...
This paper presents a computational analysis of human-robot working alliance trust with behaviour change intervention domain. The model can be used as a trust evaluation module that supports robot-based therapy in maintaining trust human trust towards robots. Simulation experiments under various parameter settings indicated that the model could gen...
The pressure at the workplace is unavoidable due to the demands of the contemporary work environment. Pressure perceived as acceptable by an individual may even keep workers alert, motivated, able to work and learn, depending on the available resources and personal characteristics. However, when that pressure becomes excessive or otherwise unmanage...
Therapeutic robots and their applications in healthcare are becoming progressively varied in their design, behaviour, and application. As a computational artefact, the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) provides significant insight. However, therapeutic robots transcend the ability of its computer-based therapeutic tools. Thus, it is imperat...
In the near future, sociable companion robots will become indispensable for providing related support in our daily living and tasks. This paper describes the design and implementation of a reading companion robot that monitors the cognitive load level of a reader during demanding reading tasks, aims to provide support for readers to complete tasks....
Anxiety is an aversive motivational state that occurs when an individual perceives threat at events. This condition creates harmful effects for candidates during interview sessions. An interviewee overwhelmed in such a state deploys worry as a resource to cope with the threat hence losing the ability to present the self positively for favourable as...
This paper presents formal recipient model of support seeking behavior. Support seeking is significantly dynamic and it includes substantial changes as demanding condition happen. From this perspective, the proposed model covers integrating of both coping strategies, support preferences and network ties. The recipient model can be used to recognize...
Recent development of technology has led to the invention of driver assistance systems that support driving and help to prevent accidents. These systems employ Recognition-Primed Decision (RPD) model that explains how human make decisions based on prior experience. However, the RPD model does not include necessary training factors in making prime d...
Agent applications have been widely used in decision making process and behaviour change interventions nowadays which might be due to the four unique features of agent proactiveness, reactivity, social ability and autonomy. However, psychological reactance has been identified as a limiting cause of agent interventions. Although, many studies have i...
In the near future, sociable companion robots will become indispensable for providing related support in our daily living and tasks. This paper describes the design and implementation of a reading companion robot that monitors the cognitive load level of a reader during demanding reading tasks, aims to provide support for readers to complete tasks....
To avoid the development of cognitive load during task-specific actions, technologies like companion robots or intelligent systems may benefit from being aware of the dynamics of related mental performance constructs. As a first step toward the development of such systems, this paper uses an agent-based approach to formalize and simulate cognitive...
Driving is defined as a process of moving from one destination to another with the main aim to get to the destination safely. This study proposes a computational, situation awareness model to assist drivers in in effective decision making. The model incorporates cognitive factors that will influence decision making in driving domain. To illustrate...
To avoid the development of cognitive load during task-specific actions, technologies like companion robots or intelligent systems may benefit from being aware of the dynamics of related mental performance constructs. As a first step toward the development of such systems, this paper uses an agent-based approach to formalize and simulate cognitive...
This paper presents the importance of modeling dynamical behaviors of human cognitive states that serves as a core foundation in creating intelligent and responsive systems. It discusses in detail the development of a dynamical model of cognitive load and reading performance which acts as the central component of creating a reading companion robot....
This paper is on agent based model of interview motivation to be integrated in a mental constructs model which serves as a basic mechanics for an intelligent virtual agent coaching for job interview. It has been hypothesized that interview motivation combines with self-efficacy and anxiety to define the mental state of a job interviewee. The concep...
This paper presents a cognitive agent model of fear of crime. The proposed model takes personality, environment, and perception of several events as input and calculates internal factors related to cognitive fear of crime, such as the belief about safety, community trust and likelihood of crime activities, and how they affect individual fear of cri...
This paper presents the development of an ambient agent model (software agent) as an initial step to develop a reading companion robot to sup-port reading performance. This ambient agent model provides detailed knowledge (human functioning) about reader’s dynamics states. Based on this human functioning knowledge, a robot will be able to reason abo...
Trust between human and robot is one of the crucial issues in robot-based therapy. It is highly important to provide a clearer and richer understanding and also to answer the questions why trust occurs in machines and how it can maintain successful interaction. In this paper, an agent based model for trust dynamics in short-term human-robot interac...
Human-functioning models that describe human cognitive and psychological states have been developed and used to serve as a core component in creating intelligent and responsive systems. Endowing such systems with these human-functioning models, it gives them the ability to reason and intelligently acting to attain its ultimate design object which i...
Anxiety can be defined as an unpleasant state of mental uneasiness or concern that causes physical and psychological discomfort. In this paper, we describe an interactive robot-based platform that is designed to be used to support of person with anxiety traits and states using non-medical treatments including mindfulness, relaxation, and muscle rel...
Hybridization can be defined as a method of combining two or more complementary, single stranded models to form a combined model through base pairing. This study proposes a computational hybrid model that combines Recognition Primed Decision (RPD) training and Situation Awareness (SA) model. The model incorporates cognitive factors that will influe...
This paper presents a formal analysis approach for self-efficacy model of interviewee's mental state during a job interview session. Self-efficacy is a construct that has been hypothesised to combine with motivation and interviewee anxiety to define state influence of interviewees. The conceptual model was built based on psychological theories and...
Driver's training is essential in order to assess and provide the driver with sufficient skills to handle vehicles in complex and dynamic environment. These skills are related to the cognitive factors that will influence the automaticity of the driver to make effective decision. To illustrate these skills, simulation scenarios based on driver's tra...
Reading performance and cognitive load play an important role to facilitate learners to learn, memorize, and understand a novel piece of information. The cognitive demands of the reading tasks for solving complicated problems, when using poor learning materials, or in a distraction condition such as noise or interruptions, can have a significant im...
Crowd simulation holds a lot of potential in modelling simulation. Crowd simulation can be used to simulate emergency scenarios without the use of a live human. Crowd simulation may run multiple simulations under variety of conditions which will save time and lower costs in planning, development, and testing of new situations or training modules. C...
Stress, both in real life and experimentally induced by either a social cognitive stress or by application of stress hormone, can influence in making decision especially in working environments. Work related performance during stress is a pattern of reactions that occurs when managers are presented with work demands that are not matched with their...
Patterns of stress at work become a popular topic and have been reported everywhere. Work related performance during stress is a pattern of reactions that occurs when managers are presented with work demands that are not matched with their knowledge, skills, or abilities, and which challenge their ability to cope. Although there are many prior find...
Agent applications have been widely used in behaviour change intervention nowadays. This is due to the four features of agents: proactive, reactivity, social ability and autonomy. However, psychological reactance is one of the major limiting causes of agent interventions. Although, many studies have investigated into both psychological reactance an...
One of the main challenges that hugely effect readers’ performance is cognitive load. It plays a pivotal role to facilitate readers to learn, memorize, and digest a piece of novel information. However, cognitive load can also have insignificant impacts on reading task when the cognitive demands of the reading task when to solve a complex problem. T...
Stress at work have been reported everywhere. Work related performance during stress is a pattern of reactions that occurs when managers are presented with work demands that are not matched with their knowledge, skills, or abilities, and which challenge their ability to cope. Although there are many prior findings pertaining to explain the developm...
Technological change (TC), in general refers to continuous invention, innovation and diffusion of technology. In relation to telecentre, TC is seen as the driving force of the centre’s operation. However, in recent years, telecentre’s usage and operation is declining slowly and this leads to the question about the continued relevance of these centr...
This paper presents a temporal dynamic model of anxiety states and traits for an individual. Anxiety is a natural part of life, and most of us experience it from time to time. But for some people, anxiety can be extreme. Based on several personal characteristics, traits, and a representation of events (i.e. psychological and physiological stressors...
This paper presents a temporal dynamic model of anxiety states and traits for an individual. Anxiety is a natural part of life, and most of us experience it from time to time. But for some people, anxiety can be extreme. Based on several personal characteristics, traits, and a representation of events (i.e. psychological and physiological stressors...
Computational model of stress reaction among natural disaster victim can be of interest for different purposes, varying from the study of virtual human cognition behaviours in stressful events to the development of intelligent support for cognitive therapies. This paper presents a novel computational agent model of stress reaction among natural dis...
Driving is defined as a process of moving from one destination to another with the main aim to get to the destination safely. This study proposes a computational situation awareness model to assist drivers in effective performance of action based on his decision. The model incorporates cognitive factors that will influence action performance (yes/n...
In recent years, modeling and simulation technologies have been gaining tremendous momentum in investigating crowd dynamics. Various simulation architectures have been developed and virtual environment representations have also been constructed for crowd simulations. To represent the behavior of a crowd, a number of behavior models have been propos...
This article presents a temporal dynamic model of anxiety states and traits for an individual. Anxiety is a natural part of life, and most of us experience it from time to time. But for some people, anxiety can be extreme. Based on several individual characteristics, traits, and a representation of events (i.e. psychological and physiological stres...
Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) model is well suited for describing agent’s mental state. The BDI of an agent represents its motivational stance and are the main determinant of agent’s actions. Therefore, explicit understanding of the representation and modelling of such motivational stance plays a central role in designing BDI agent with successful...
We propose a stimulus-stimulus association learning by coupling firing rate and precise spike timing encoding for spatio-temporal neural networks. We simulate a generic recurrent network with random and sparse connectivity consisting of Izhikevich spiking neurons. The magnitude of weight adjustment in learning is dependent on pre- and postsynaptic...
In many occasions, feeling depressed is a common human experience, occurring most often as a normal response to external events. However, if this feeling takes hold and will not go away, it may become a unipolar depression. Persons with a depressive illness cannot merely ‘pull themselves together’ and get better. Normally they may feel sad, anxious...
The recent trend towards developing a new generation of robots capable of operating in human-centered environments, and participating in and assisting our daily lives has introduced the need for robotic systems capable to communicate and to react to their users in a social and engaging way. This type of robot could play essential roles to help indi...
Reading is one of the main activities that readers are immensely practicing during their daily lives and this activity is accompanied with some challenges that may cause disengagement during the process. Recently, assistive robotics technologies have shown extensive powerful effects in assisting its users to tackle various domain specific problems....
This paper describes the verification analysis for agent formal model of behaviour change process. The verification analysis was based on two widely used approaches in agent formal evaluation namely mathematical and automated analysis. The mathematical analysis made use of stability equilibria point while the automated, made use of Temporal Trace L...
The recent trend towards developing a new generation of robots capable of operating in human-centered environments, and participating in and assisting our daily lives has introduced the need for robotic systems capable to communicate and to react to their users in a social and engaging way. This type of robot could play essential roles to help indi...
In Malaysia, ICTs have been identified as a crucial enabler in the knowledge-based economy to facilitate the acquisition, utilization, and dissemination of knowledge towards enhancing the economic and social values of society. Numerous programmes have been organized, developed, designed and executed to optimize the usage of these ICT Public access...
In recent years, modeling and simulation technologies have been gaining tremendous momentum in investigating crowd dynamics. Various simulation architectures have been developed and virtual environment representations have also been constructed for crowd simulations. To represent the behavior of a crowd, a number of behavior models have been propos...
Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) model is well suited for describing agent's mental state. The BDI of an agent represents its motivational stance and are the main determinant of agent's actions. Therefore, explicit understanding of the representation and modelling of such motivational stance plays a central role in designing BDI agent with successful...
It is imperative to consider human different perspective in order to visualize the information data towards users. Many studies proved that personality traits are one of the most significant factors that must be considered to give meaningful value when users see a view. This study tries to give ample evidence toward adjusting visual features on tag...
As far as the development of youth community is concerned, the implementation of a dedicated decision aid is believed to have ample potentials in building their skillsin making decisions. Theabsence of proper guidance in making crucial decisions could cause irreversible effects to youth's future and consequently to the development plan of the count...
Humans are social creatures, and when facing certain level of events, they to seek for support from others and vice versa. In this paper, a multi-agent model for simulating the dynamics of support provision and receipt interaction among different individuals is presented. Important concepts in social support network and stress buffering studies wer...
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a disorder that is caused by multiple factors. Much work has been conducted to understand CFS mechanisms but little attention has been paid to model the behaviour of a person who experienced chronic fatigue syndrome. The article aims to present verification results made on an agent model that was developed to simul...
This paper presents a dynamic agent model of chronic fatigue syndrome for an individual. Chronic fatigue syndrome is the most common name to define a group of cognitive and medical disorders caused by persistent fatigue. Based on several personal characteristics, viral infection, and a representation of events (i.e. psychological and physiological...
Caring for a depressed person may have substantial impact on the health and well-being of the caregiver. In this paper, an ambient agent model is proposed that supports caregivers, to prevent or decrease the burden in them and promote their well-being. The agent integrates a domain model of the functioning of the caregiver and the care recipient an...
This article presents the design of an intelligent agent application aimed at supporting people with a cognitive vulnerability to prevent the onset of a depression. For this, a computational model of the cognitive processes around depression is used. The agent application uses the principles of Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy (RBET). The ef-fe...
Through social interaction, the mood of a person can affect the mood of others. The speed and intensity of such mood contagion can differ, depending on the persons and the type and intensity of their interactions. Especially in close relationships the negative mood of a depressed person can have a serious impact on the moods of the ones close to hi...
Helping someone who is depressed can be very important to the depressed person. A number of supportive family members or friends can often make a big difference. This paper addresses how a social support network can be formed, taking the needs of the support recipient and the possibilities of the potential support providers into account. To do so,...
People react differently to stress. According to the Cognitive Motivational Relational Theory by Lazarus and Folkman, the appraisal of stress and the emotions related to it determine whether people cope with stress by focussing on altering the situation (problem focussed) or on changing the emotional consequences of the events (emotion focussed). T...
Due to recent research, the neurobiological elements behind mental disorders such as depression become more and more clear. This paper presents an integrated computational model based on neurobiological insights and psychological theories. The model is used to analyse the effect of existing psychological treatments. The simulation experiments give...
Few studies describing caregiver stress and coping have focused on the effects of informal caregiving for depressed care recipients.
The major purpose of this paper was to investigate the dynamics of the informal care support and receipt interactions among
caregivers and care recipients using a computational modelling approach. Important concepts i...
This paper presents the design of an intelligent agent application aimed at supporting people with a cognitive vulnerability to prevent the onset of a depression. For this, a computational model of the cognitive processes around depression is used. The agent application uses the principles of Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy. The effect of the...
One of the challenges for persons with a history of unipolar depression is to stay healthy throughout their lifetime. In principle, with more stressing prior onset cases, it escalates the risk of the persons to fall into a relapse. In this paper, a domain model and an integrative ambient agent model to support persons from relapse is presented. Fir...
Depression is a common mental disorder. Appropriate support from others can reduce the cognitive distortion that can be caused by subsequent depressions. To increase our understanding of this process, an agent model is presented in this paper in which the positive and negative effects of social support and its relation with cognitive thoughts are m...