mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Scaffolding Empathy: Training Counselors with Simulated Patients and Utterance-level Performance Visualizations

arXiv 2502.18673 ↗First posted 25 Feb 2025cs.HC cs.CL cs.MAcited by 14

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Abstract (arXiv)

Learning therapeutic counseling involves significant role-play experience with mock patients, with current manual training methods providing only intermittent granular feedback. We seek to accelerate and optimize counselor training by providing frequent, detailed feedback to trainees as they interact with a simulated patient. Our first application domain involves training motivational interviewing skills for counselors. Motivational interviewing is a collaborative counseling style in which patients are guided to talk about changing their behavior, with empathetic counseling an essential ingredient. We developed and evaluated an LLM-powered training system that features a simulated patient and visualizations of turn-by-turn performance feedback tailored to the needs of counselors learning motivational interviewing. We conducted an evaluation study with professional and student counselors, demonstrating high usability and satisfaction with the system. We present design implications for the development of automated systems that train users in counseling skills and their generalizability to other types of social skills training.

Key facts. Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 20 of its 83 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 25 Feb 2025.

Builds on

20 of 83 references.

References · 20

  1. 2023A Survey on Hallucination in Large Language Models: Principles, Taxonomy, Challenges, and Open Questionscited by 1,582
  2. 2022Discovering Language Model Behaviors with Model-Written Evaluationscited by 805
  3. 2023AgentVerse: Facilitating Multi-Agent Collaboration and Exploring Emergent Behaviorscited by 580
  4. 2023A Dynamic LLM-Powered Agent Network for Task-Oriented Agent Collaborationcited by 281
  5. 2023Bias Runs Deep: Implicit Reasoning Biases in Persona-Assigned LLMscited by 191
  6. 2024Evaluating Large Language Model Biases in Persona-Steered Generationcited by 78
  7. 2024Roleplay-doh: Enabling Domain-Experts to Create LLM-simulated Patients via Eliciting and Adhering to Principlescited by 72
  8. 2024Do LLMs Have Distinct and Consistent Personality? TRAIT: Personality Testset designed for LLMs with Psychometricscited by 56
  9. 2023Rehearsal: Simulating Conflict to Teach Conflict Resolutioncited by 54
  10. 2024Automatic Interactive Evaluation for Large Language Models with State Aware Patient Simulatorcited by 36
  11. 2024A Chain-of-Thought Prompting Approach with LLMs for Evaluating Students' Formative Assessment Responses in Sciencecited by 31
  12. 2024Limited Ability of LLMs to Simulate Human Psychological Behaviours: a Psychometric Analysiscited by 30
8 more
  1. 2024Polaris: A Safety-focused LLM Constellation Architecture for Healthcarecited by 27
  2. 2024Leveraging Large Language Model as Simulated Patients for Clinical Educationcited by 20
  3. 2024Understanding the Therapeutic Relationship between Counselors and Clients in Online Text-based Counseling using LLMscited by 19
  4. 2024Virtual Agents for Alcohol Use Counseling: Exploring LLM-Powered Motivational Interviewingcited by 17
  5. 2023Developing Social Robots with Empathetic Non-Verbal Cues Using Large Language Modelscited by 12
  6. 2024The Dark Patterns of Personalized Persuasion in Large Language Models: Exposing Persuasive Linguistic Features for Big Five Personality Traits in LLMs Responsescited by 9
  7. 2024Empathic Grounding: Explorations using Multimodal Interaction and Large Language Models with Conversational Agentscited by 5
  8. 2024Automated Assessment and Adaptive Multimodal Formative Feedback Improves Psychomotor Skills Training Outcomes in Quadrotor Teleoperationcited by 3

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 10; 2026: 4.

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  1. 2025From LLM Reasoning to Autonomous AI Agents: A Comprehensive Reviewcited by 146
  2. 2025When Large Language Models are Reliable for Judging Empathic Communicationcited by 21
  3. 2025Adaptive-VP: A Framework for LLM-Based Virtual Patients that Adapts to Trainees' Dialogue to Facilitate Nurse Communication Trainingcited by 9
  4. 2025A Risk Ontology for Evaluating AI-Powered Psychotherapy Virtual Agentscited by 5
  5. 2026PatientHub: A Unified Framework for Patient Simulationcited by 4
  6. 2026Assessing Risks of Large Language Models in Mental Health Support: A Framework for Automated Clinical AI Red Teamingcited by 3
  7. 2025SocialLM: Social Signal Processing of Patient-Provider Communication using LLMs and Contextual Aggregationcited by 1
  8. 2025HealthDial: A No-Code LLM-Assisted Dialogue Authoring Tool for Healthcare Virtual Agentscited by 1
  9. 2025Human or LLM as Standardized Patients? A Comparative Study for Medical Educationcited by 1
  10. 2025"Is This Really a Human Peer Supporter?": Misalignments Between Peer Supporters and Experts in LLM-Supported Interactionscited by 0
  11. 2025"I Said Things I Needed to Hear Myself": Peer Support as an Emotional, Organisational, and Sociotechnical Practice in Singaporecited by 0
  12. 2025A Case for Leveraging Generative AI to Expand and Enhance Training in the Provision of Mental Health Servicescited by 0
2 more
  1. 2026GenAI for Social Work Field Education: Client Simulation with Real-Time Feedbackcited by 0
  2. 2026SocialCoach: Personalized Social Skill Learning with Agentic Tutoring and Practicecited by 0