mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Improving Multi-turn Emotional Support Dialogue Generation with Lookahead Strategy Planning

arXiv 2210.04242 ↗First posted 9 Oct 2022cs.CLcited by 59

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Abstract (arXiv)

Providing Emotional Support (ES) to soothe people in emotional distress is an essential capability in social interactions. Most existing researches on building ES conversation systems only considered single-turn interactions with users, which was over-simplified. In comparison, multi-turn ES conversation systems can provide ES more effectively, but face several new technical challenges, including: (1) how to adopt appropriate support strategies to achieve the long-term dialogue goal of comforting the user's emotion; (2) how to dynamically model the user's state. In this paper, we propose a novel system MultiESC to address these issues. For strategy planning, drawing inspiration from the A* search algorithm, we propose lookahead heuristics to estimate the future user feedback after using particular strategies, which helps to select strategies that can lead to the best long-term effects. For user state modeling, MultiESC focuses on capturing users' subtle emotional expressions and understanding their emotion causes. Extensive experiments show that MultiESC significantly outperforms competitive baselines in both dialogue generation and strategy planning. Our codes are available at https://github.com/lwgkzl/MultiESC.

Key facts. Cited by 59 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 24 of its 44 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 9 Oct 2022.

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24 of 44 references.

References · 24

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2019BART: Denoising Sequence-to-Sequence Pre-training for Natural Language Generation, Translation, and Comprehensioncited by 5,874
  3. 2019HuggingFace's Transformers: State-of-the-art Natural Language Processingcited by 2,201
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  5. 2017Decoupled Weight Decay Regularizationcited by 1,722
  6. 2019DialoGPT: Large-Scale Generative Pre-training for Conversational Response Generationcited by 842
  7. 2020Recipes for building an open-domain chatbotcited by 593
  8. 2021Towards Emotional Support Dialog Systemscited by 294
  9. 2020A Computational Approach to Understanding Empathy Expressed in Text-Based Mental Health Supportcited by 182
  10. 2016Long Short-Term Memory-Networks for Machine Readingcited by 161
  11. 2021NeuroLogic A*esque Decoding: Constrained Text Generation with Lookahead Heuristicscited by 153
  12. 2020MIME: MIMicking Emotions for Empathetic Response Generationcited by 114
12 more
  1. 2019Knowledge-Enriched Transformer for Emotion Detection in Textual Conversationscited by 92
  2. 2019MoEL: Mixture of Empathetic Listenerscited by 91
  3. 2022MISC: A MIxed Strategy-Aware Model Integrating COMET for Emotional Support Conversationcited by 84
  4. 2020Recognizing Emotion Cause in Conversationscited by 66
  5. 2022Control Globally, Understand Locally: A Global-to-Local Hierarchical Graph Network for Emotional Support Conversationcited by 56
  6. 2020Knowledge Bridging for Empathetic Dialogue Generationcited by 50
  7. 2021CoMAE: A Multi-factor Hierarchical Framework for Empathetic Response Generationcited by 42
  8. 2021DialoGraph: Incorporating Interpretable Strategy-Graph Networks into Negotiation Dialoguescited by 25
  9. 2019Augmenting Non-Collaborative Dialog Systems with Explicit Semantic and Strategic Dialog Historycited by 20
  10. 2021RESPER: Computationally Modelling Resisting Strategies in Persuasive Conversationscited by 18
  11. 2019EmpDG: Multiresolution Interactive Empathetic Dialogue Generationcited by 14
  12. 2021Empathetic Response Generation through Graph-based Multi-hop Reasoning on Emotional Causalitycited by 9

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2022: 1; 2023: 14; 2024: 16; 2025: 14; 2026: 14.

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  1. 2023SoulChat: Improving LLMs' Empathy, Listening, and Comfort Abilities through Fine-tuning with Multi-turn Empathy Conversationscited by 109
  2. 2023Plug-and-Play Policy Planner for Large Language Model Powered Dialogue Agentscited by 76
  3. 2023Building Emotional Support Chatbots in the Era of LLMscited by 62
  4. 2023Prompt-Based Monte-Carlo Tree Search for Goal-Oriented Dialogue Policy Planningcited by 60
  5. 2023CharacterChat: Learning towards Conversational AI with Personalized Social Supportcited by 58
  6. 2025Evaluating LLM-based Agents for Multi-Turn Conversations: A Surveycited by 56
  7. 2024Can Large Language Models be Good Emotional Supporter? Mitigating Preference Bias on Emotional Support Conversationcited by 55
  8. 2023Is ChatGPT Equipped with Emotional Dialogue Capabilities?cited by 54
  9. 2024Learning to Clarify: Multi-turn Conversations with Action-Based Contrastive Self-Trainingcited by 53
  10. 2024ESCoT: Towards Interpretable Emotional Support Dialogue Systemscited by 46
  11. 2023Knowledge-enhanced Mixed-initiative Dialogue System for Emotional Support Conversationscited by 41
  12. 2022PAL: Persona-Augmented Emotional Support Conversation Generationcited by 39
38 more
  1. 2024Planning Like Human: A Dual-process Framework for Dialogue Planningcited by 32
  2. 2023TransESC: Smoothing Emotional Support Conversation via Turn-Level State Transitioncited by 30
  3. 2023Aligning Language Models with Human Preferences via a Bayesian Approachcited by 27
  4. 2024ComPeer: A Generative Conversational Agent for Proactive Peer Supportcited by 24
  5. 2023COOPER: Coordinating Specialized Agents towards a Complex Dialogue Goalcited by 18
  6. 2023Facilitating Multi-turn Emotional Support Conversation with Positive Emotion Elicitation: A Reinforcement Learning Approachcited by 15
  7. 2024Simulation-Free Hierarchical Latent Policy Planning for Proactive Dialoguescited by 14
  8. 2024Large Language Models are Capable of Offering Cognitive Reappraisal, if Guidedcited by 13
  9. 2025Planning of Heuristics: Strategic Planning on Large Language Models with Monte Carlo Tree Search for Automating Heuristic Optimizationcited by 13
  10. 2023TPE: Towards Better Compositional Reasoning over Conceptual Tools with Multi-persona Collaborationcited by 11
  11. 2025IntentionESC: An Intention-Centered Framework for Enhancing Emotional Support in Dialogue Systemscited by 11
  12. 2023Sibyl: Empowering Empathetic Dialogue Generation in Large Language Models via Sensible and Visionary Commonsense Inferencecited by 9
  13. 2024EmoDynamiX: Emotional Support Dialogue Strategy Prediction by Modelling MiXed Emotions and Discourse Dynamicscited by 9
  14. 2024Steering Conversational Large Language Models for Long Emotional Support Conversationscited by 8
  15. 2025Dialogue Systems for Emotional Support via Value Reinforcementcited by 8
  16. 2023Knowledge-enhanced Memory Model for Emotional Support Conversationcited by 7
  17. 2024AutoPal: Autonomous Adaptation to Users for Personal AI Companionshipcited by 6
  18. 2024Constrained Decoding with Speculative Lookaheadscited by 6
  19. 2024Dynamic Demonstration Retrieval and Cognitive Understanding for Emotional Support Conversationcited by 5
  20. 2025Towards Open-Ended Emotional Support Conversations in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning with Future-Oriented Rewardscited by 5
  21. 2024Mitigating Unhelpfulness in Emotional Support Conversations with Multifaceted AI Feedbackcited by 4
  22. 2024CauESC: A Causal Aware Model for Emotional Support Conversationcited by 4
  23. 2024The Future of Cognitive Strategy-enhanced Persuasive Dialogue Agents: New Perspectives and Trendscited by 4
  24. 2025DialogXpert: Driving Intelligent and Emotion-Aware Conversations through Online Value-Based Reinforcement Learning with LLM Priorscited by 4
  25. 2025DiaCBT: A Long-Periodic Dialogue Corpus Guided by Cognitive Conceptualization Diagram for CBT-based Psychological Counselingcited by 4
  26. 2026A Multi-Agent Framework with Structured Reasoning and Reflective Refinement for Multimodal Empathetic Response Generationcited by 4
  27. 2025Psy-Insight: Explainable Multi-turn Bilingual Dataset for Mental Health Counselingcited by 3
  28. 2025EmoFSM: A Finite State Machine for Emotional Support Conversationcited by 3
  29. 2025When LLMs Team Up: The Emergence of Collaborative Affective Computingcited by 2
  30. 2026Affective Flow Language Model for Emotional Support Conversationcited by 2
  31. 2026Think Thrice Before You Speak: Dual knowledge-enhanced Theory-of-Mind Reasoning for Persuasive Agentscited by 2
  32. 2024Large Language Model Can Be a Foundation for Hidden Rationale-Based Retrievalcited by 1
  33. 2025Spiritual-LLM : Gita Inspired Mental Health Therapy In the Era of LLMscited by 1
  34. 2026Stress-Testing Emotional Support Models: Moving from Homogeneous to Diverse Help Seekerscited by 1
  35. 2026Nano-EmoX: Unifying Multimodal Emotional Intelligence from Perception to Empathycited by 1
  36. 2026Discourse Diversity in Multi-Turn Empathic Dialoguecited by 1
  37. 2026LifeSide: Benchmarking Agents as Lifelong Digital Companionscited by 1
  38. 2025EmoAssist: Emotional Assistant for Visual Impairment Communitycited by 0

50 most cited of 59 All 59 (JSON)