Abstract: A physically animated visual display is a robotic device, capable of multiple degree-of-freedom motion, that is adapted to improve a user's emotional state, cognitive performance, and comfort level through reactive and goal-directed manipulation of the position of the display. The affective-cognitive system comprises a feature extraction subsystem for deriving physical information about a user from data obtained from sensors, a perception subsystem for processing the data in order to determine the user's current emotional state, affective-cognitive state, or posture, an action selection subsystem for determining an action to be taken in response, and a motor system for physically animating the robotic device in accordance with the determined action. The system may include feedback modeling based on a reaction of the user to the movement of the apparatus increasing or decreasing the probability of choosing the current behavior based on the user's reaction.