research-article

Dynamic Demonstration Retrieval and Cognitive Understanding for Emotional Support Conversation

Authors:

Ying ShenAuthors Info & Claims

SIGIR '24: Proceedings of the 47th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval

Pages 774 - 784

https://doi.org/10.1145/3626772.3657695

Published: 11 July 2024 Publication History

Abstract

Emotional Support Conversation (ESC) systems are pivotal in providing empathetic interactions, aiding users through negative emotional states by understanding and addressing their unique experiences. In this paper, we tackle two key challenges in ESC: enhancing contextually relevant and empathetic response generation through dynamic demonstration retrieval, and advancing cognitive understanding to grasp implicit mental states comprehensively. We introduce Dynamic Demonstration Retrieval and Cognitive-Aspect Situation Understanding (D²RCU), a novel approach that synergizes these elements to improve the quality of support provided in ESCs. By leveraging in-context learning and persona information, we introduce an innovative retrieval mechanism that selects informative and personalized demonstration pairs. We also propose a cognitive understanding module that utilizes four cognitive relationships from the ATOMIC knowledge source to deepen situational awareness of help-seekers' mental states. Our supportive decoder integrates information from diverse knowledge sources, underpinning response generation that is both empathetic and cognitively aware. The effectiveness of D²RCU is demonstrated through extensive automatic and human evaluations, revealing substantial improvements over numerous state-of-the-art models, with up to 13.79% enhancement in overall performance of ten metrics. Our codes are available for public access to facilitate further research and development.

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Cited By

Cao YChen ZBi GFeng YChen MWan FHuang MYu H(2024)Enhancing Emotional Support Conversation with Cognitive Chain-of-Thought ReasoningNatural Language Processing and Chinese Computing10.1007/978-981-97-9431-7_14(175-187)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-9431-7_14

Index Terms

Dynamic Demonstration Retrieval and Cognitive Understanding for Emotional Support Conversation
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
    1. Natural language processing
      1. Natural language generation
2. Information systems
  1. Information retrieval
    1. Users and interactive retrieval
      1. Personalization

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cover image ACM Conferences

SIGIR '24: Proceedings of the 47th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval

July 2024

3164 pages

ISBN:9798400704314

DOI:10.1145/3626772

General Chairs:
Grace Hui Yang
Georgetown University, USA
,
Hongning Wang
Tsinghua University, China
,
Sam Han
The Washington Post, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Claudia Hauff
Spotify, Netherlands
,
Guido Zuccon
The University of Queensland, Australia
,
Yi Zhang
University of California Santa Cruz, USA

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Published: 11 July 2024

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SIGIR 2024: The 47th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval

July 14 - 18, 2024

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Cited By

Cao YChen ZBi GFeng YChen MWan FHuang MYu H(2024)Enhancing Emotional Support Conversation with Cognitive Chain-of-Thought ReasoningNatural Language Processing and Chinese Computing10.1007/978-981-97-9431-7_14(175-187)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-9431-7_14

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