# Bodily expressed emotion understanding through integrating Laban movement analysis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.02187 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02187/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Apr 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Quo Vadis, Action Recognition? A New Model and the Kinetics Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07750/) (2017)
- [The Kinetics Human Action Video Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.06950/) (2017)
- [SlowFast Networks for Video Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03982/) (2018)
- [Spatial Temporal Graph Convolutional Networks for Skeleton-Based Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07455/) (2018)
- [Video Swin Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13230/) (2021)
- [Realtime Multi-Person 2D Pose Estimation using Part Affinity Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.08050/) (2016)
- [AVA: A Video Dataset of Spatio-temporally Localized Atomic Visual Actions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.08421/) (2017)
- [Temporal Segment Networks for Action Recognition in Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.02953/) (2017)
- [Revisiting Skeleton-based Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.13586/) (2021)
- [Understanding and Mitigating Annotation Bias in Facial Expression Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08504/) (2021)
- [Affective Image Content Analysis: Two Decades Review and New Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.16125/) (2021)
- [STEP: Spatial Temporal Graph Convolutional Networks for Emotion Perception from Gaits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.12906/) (2019)
- [ARBEE: Towards Automated Recognition of Bodily Expression of Emotion In the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.09568/) (2018)
- [Emotion Recognition from Multiple Modalities: Fundamentals and Methodologies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10152/) (2021)
- [Emotion Understanding in Videos Through Body, Context, and Visual-Semantic Embedding Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.16396/) (2020)
- [MEBOW: Monocular Estimation of Body Orientation In the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13688/) (2020)
- [Leveraging Semantic Scene Characteristics and Multi-Stream Convolutional Architectures in a Contextual Approach for Video-Based Visual Emotion Recognition in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.07484/) (2021)
- [Probabilistic Multigraph Modeling for Improving the Quality of Crowdsourced Affective Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.01096/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Unlocking the Emotional World of Visual Media: An Overview of the Science, Research, and Impact of Understanding Emotion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.13463/) (2023)
- [DuoSpaceNet: Leveraging Both Bird's-Eye-View and Perspective View Representations for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10577/) (2024)
- [Mind the Motions: Benchmarking Theory-of-Mind in Everyday Body Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.15887/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Body movements carry important information about a person's emotions or mental state and are essential in daily communication. Enhancing the ability of machines to understand emotions expressed through body language can improve the communication of assistive robots with children and elderly users, provide psychiatric professionals with quantitative diagnostic and prognostic assistance, and aid law enforcement in identifying deception. This study develops a high-quality human motor element dataset based on the Laban Movement Analysis movement coding system and utilizes that to jointly learn about motor elements and emotions. Our long-term ambition is to integrate knowledge from computing, psychology, and performing arts to enable automated understanding and analysis of emotion and mental state through body language. This work serves as a launchpad for further research into recognizing emotions through analysis of human movement.