Affective Flow Language Model for Emotional Support Conversation

arXiv:2602.08826 · cs.CL, cs.AI · Submitted 2026-02-09 · Read on arXiv

cs.CL, cs.AI

Submitted: 2026-02-09

Updated: 2026-09-25

Comments: 24 pages, 7 figures. Code available at https://github.com/chz2025/AffectiveFlow

Code: https://github.com/chz2025/AffectiveFlow

License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

Terminology

• Alignment — 25× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Emotional Support Conversation — 24× in this paper
• Consistency — 16× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Core — 6× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Accuracy — 5× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Credit assignment — 5× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Grounding — 5× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Ablation — 4× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Interpretability — 4× in this paper · explained in 15 episodes
• Ablation study — 3× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Aggregation — 3× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Perplexity — 3× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Tokenization — 3× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Distribution Matching — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Knowledge Graph — 2× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
• Large Language Models (LLMs) — 2× in this paper · explained in 6 episodes
• Mode Collapse — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Multi-agent Collaboration — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Reinforcement Learning — 2× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
• Robustness — 2× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
• Steering — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Actionability — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Adaptation — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Affective-Flow Preference Optimization — 1× in this paper
• Alignment Methods — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Data Augmentation — 1× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
• Evaluation Dimensions — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Failure Modes — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Frozen model — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Frustration — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Generalizability — 1× in this paper · explained in 6 episodes
• In-Context Learning — 1× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
• Large Language Model (LLM) — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Markov Decision Process (MDP) — 1× in this paper · explained in 11 episodes
• Personalization — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Regularization — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Semantic Understanding — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes

Sources

• Knowledge-enhanced Mixed-initiative Dialogue System for Emotional Support Conversations
• Interactive Dialogue Agents via Reinforcement Learning on Hindsight Regenerations
• Dialogue Systems for Emotional Support via Value Reinforcement
• MoEL: Mixture of Empathetic Listeners
• MIME: MIMicking Emotions for Empathetic Response Generation
• LLMdoctor: Token-Level Flow-Guided Preference Optimization for Efficient Test-Time Alignment of Large Language Models
• Gemma 2: Improving Open Language Models at a Practical Size
• Qwen2.5 Technical Report
• Chain of Strategy Optimization Makes Large Language Models Better Emotional Supporter
• Building Emotional Support Chatbots in the Era of LLMs

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