Look Beyond Feeling: Unveiling Latent Needs from Implicit Expressions for Proactive Emotional Support (2025.emnlp-main)
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| Challenge: | Large language models (LLMs) are gaining popularity as scalable tools for mental health support . however, nearly half of individuals do not receive timely support due to limited selfawareness or reluctance to seek help. |
| Approach: | They propose a proactive emotional support framework that leverages principles of active listening to uncover implicit user needs. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model elicits implicit emotional needs and delivers empathetic support compared to baselines . |
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| Challenge: | Existing large language models (LLMs) struggle to generate emotional support response, despite observing and reflecting on the help-seeker’s situation . Empathy drives the formation of constructive interpersonal and supportive relationships, including counseling for mental health care . |
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| Challenge: | Large language models (LLMs) have shown growing potential in offering emotional support, but their ability to deliver culturally sensitive support remains underexplored due to a lack of resources. |
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| Challenge: | Large Language Models (LLMs) show great potential for expressing empathy, but often deliver generic responses that fail to address users’ specific needs. |
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| Challenge: | IntentionESC defines the possible intentions of supporters in emotional support conversations, identifies key emotional state aspects for inferring these intentions, and maps them to appropriate support strategies. |
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Hongbin Na, Zimu Wang, Zhaoming Chen, Peilin Zhou, Yining Hua, Grace Ziqi Zhou, Haiyang Zhang, Tao Shen, Wei Wang, John Torous, Shaoxiong Ji, Ling Chen
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| Challenge: | Experimental results show that LLMs can infer persona traits and subtle shifts in emotionality and extraversion occur . scalable solutions with reduced costs and enhanced data privacy are needed . |
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| Challenge: | Large language models are often defaulted to passive responses or narrow clarifications when faced with incomplete or under-specified prompts. |
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CogEmp:A Cognitive Empathy-Oriented Dialogue System for Structured Psychological Counseling (2026.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Existing models lack accurate modeling of cognitive empathy, especially the ability to understand users’ emotions and their underlying psychological causes. |
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| Challenge: | Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown strong generalization abilities to excel in various tasks, including emotion support conversations. |
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