I do think that the Turing test is still the greatest test for strong AI, machines are still very far from passing it, and I feel that understanding human emotion should be a part of the general strategy of "understanding human things" on a level sufficient to pass a very long Turing test session:
* From a technology standpoint it's not clear that what we'd call human emotion requires a different approach than other "human things."
* From an application standpoint, a machine much dumber than an adult (as in totally can't pass the Turing test) but with developed emotional facilities is kinda scary, perhaps like an alien child ("human-like feelings" with undeveloped reasoning, and the reasoning is undeveloped in ways we're not familiar with - at least I'm conjecturing that this machine will not be able to pass "the human children Turing test" any more than the adult version.) It's not clear what good you can do with such a machine.
All of the above from a serious angle and without dwelling on the joy of sexprs like (Feels (Feels (Feels (Object)))).