# Long-Short Distance Graph Neural Networks and Improved Curriculum Learning for Emotion Recognition in Conversation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15205 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15205/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 14 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Jul 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [RoBERTa: A Robustly Optimized BERT Pretraining Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.11692/) (2019)
- [MELD: A Multimodal Multi-Party Dataset for Emotion Recognition in Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.02508/) (2018)
- [DialogueRNN: An Attentive RNN for Emotion Detection in Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.00405/) (2018)
- [MMGCN: Multimodal Fusion via Deep Graph Convolution Network for Emotion Recognition in Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.06779/) (2021)
- [Directed Acyclic Graph Network for Conversational Emotion Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.12907/) (2021)
- [DialogueCRN: Contextual Reasoning Networks for Emotion Recognition in Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01978/) (2021)
- [Directed Acyclic Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.07965/) (2021)
- [Deep Imbalanced Learning for Multimodal Emotion Recognition in Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06337/) (2023)
- [Hybrid Curriculum Learning for Emotion Recognition in Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11718/) (2021)
- [LaERC-S: Improving LLM-based Emotion Recognition in Conversation with Speaker Characteristics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07260/) (2024)
- [Recent Advances in Multimodal Affective Computing: An NLP Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.07388/) (2024)
- [BiosERC: Integrating Biography Speakers Supported by LLMs for ERC Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.04279/) (2024)
- [BERT-ERC: Fine-tuning BERT is Enough for Emotion Recognition in Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.06745/) (2023)
- [Curriculum Learning Meets Directed Acyclic Graph for Multimodal Emotion Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17269/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [SELF-EMO: Emotional Self-Evolution from Recognition to Consistent Expression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.18003/) (2026)
- [TCDA: Thread-Constrained Discourse-Aware Modeling for Conversational Sentiment Quadruple Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.01717/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Emotion Recognition in Conversation (ERC) is a practical and challenging task. This paper proposes a novel multimodal approach, the Long-Short Distance Graph Neural Network (LSDGNN). Based on the Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG), it constructs a long-distance graph neural network and a short-distance graph neural network to obtain multimodal features of distant and nearby utterances, respectively. To ensure that long- and short-distance features are as distinct as possible in representation while enabling mutual influence between the two modules, we employ a Differential Regularizer and incorporate a BiAffine Module to facilitate feature interaction. In addition, we propose an Improved Curriculum Learning (ICL) to address the challenge of data imbalance. By computing the similarity between different emotions to emphasize the shifts in similar emotions, we design a "weighted emotional shift" metric and develop a difficulty measurer, enabling a training process that prioritizes learning easy samples before harder ones. Experimental results on the IEMOCAP and MELD datasets demonstrate that our model outperforms existing benchmarks.