# SCoPE: Shift-Aware Speaker-Conditioned Priors for Emotion Recognition in Conversations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.20445 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.20445/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 26 of its 73 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 May 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [Multimodal Machine Learning: A Survey and Taxonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.09406/) (2017)
- [MELD: A Multimodal Multi-Party Dataset for Emotion Recognition in Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.02508/) (2018)
- [MISA: Modality-Invariant and -Specific Representations for Multimodal Sentiment Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.03545/) (2020)
- [DialogueRNN: An Attentive RNN for Emotion Detection in Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.00405/) (2018)
- [DialogueGCN: A Graph Convolutional Neural Network for Emotion Recognition in Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.11540/) (2019)
- [COSMIC: COmmonSense knowledge for eMotion Identification in Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02795/) (2020)
- [Emotion Recognition in Conversation: Research Challenges, Datasets, and Recent Advances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02947/) (2019)
- [Directed Acyclic Graph Network for Conversational Emotion Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.12907/) (2021)
- [Knowledge-Enriched Transformer for Emotion Detection in Textual Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.10681/) (2019)
- [DialogueCRN: Contextual Reasoning Networks for Emotion Recognition in Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01978/) (2021)
- [EmoBERTa: Speaker-Aware Emotion Recognition in Conversation with RoBERTa](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.12009/) (2021)
- [A Transformer-Based Model With Self-Distillation for Multimodal Emotion Recognition in Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.20494/) (2023)
- [CoMPM: Context Modeling with Speaker's Pre-trained Memory Tracking for Emotion Recognition in Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.11626/) (2021)
- [Revisiting Multimodal Emotion Recognition in Conversation from the Perspective of Graph Spectrum](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17862/) (2024)
- [Supervised Prototypical Contrastive Learning for Emotion Recognition in Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08713/) (2022)
- [Discovering Emotion and Reasoning its Flip in Multi-Party Conversations using Masked Memory Network and Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12360/) (2021)
- [CFN-ESA: A Cross-Modal Fusion Network with Emotion-Shift Awareness for Dialogue Emotion Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15432/) (2023)
- [Joyful: Joint Modality Fusion and Graph Contrastive Learning for Multimodal Emotion Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11009/) (2023)
- [LaERC-S: Improving LLM-based Emotion Recognition in Conversation with Speaker Characteristics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07260/) (2024)
- [InstructERC: Reforming Emotion Recognition in Conversation with Multi-task Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11911/) (2023)
- [BiosERC: Integrating Biography Speakers Supported by LLMs for ERC Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.04279/) (2024)
- [Multimodal Emotion Recognition in Conversations: A Survey of Methods, Trends, Challenges and Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20511/) (2025)
- [S+PAGE: A Speaker and Position-Aware Graph Neural Network Model for Emotion Recognition in Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12389/) (2021)
- [EmotionIC: emotional inertia and contagion-driven dependency modeling for emotion recognition in conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11117/) (2023)
- [SemEval 2024 -- Task 10: Emotion Discovery and Reasoning its Flip in Conversation (EDiReF)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18944/) (2024)
- [Can Large Language Models Generate Effective Datasets for Emotion Recognition in Conversations?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05474/) (2025)

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

- [Do SpeechLMs Hear Their Own Opinions? Diagnosing and Mitigating Previous-Belief Contamination in Streaming Emotion Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.20769/) (2026)
- [Dual-Scale State-Space Modeling with Speaker-Wise Dynamic CRF for Speech Emotion Recognition in Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.22399/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In conversations, human emotions are transient; however, they tend to persist across multiple utterances. For example, we rarely switch instantly between contrasting emotions such as happiness and anger. Instead, emotions tend to evolve smoothly, and these patterns are often speaker-specific. Some people might escalate, while others gradually cool down over time. Furthermore, when emotions change during a conversation, they are often driven by contextual factors, such as newly received information or unexpected events. Even though progress has been made in Emotion Recognition in Conversations (ERC), most existing approaches still rely heavily on overt evidence and do not sufficiently model these non-apparent factors. Especially in multimodal settings, this makes these models fragile when the signals are noisy (e.g., occluded faces, slang expressions, or microphone noise). To address these limitations, we introduce Speaker-Conditioned Priors over Emotions (SCoPE). SCoPE is a light weight module that utilizes the emotional history of each speaker and explicitly models their priors for use in subsequent emotion classification. Second, we incorporate emotion shift prediction, a well-established concept in ERC, to guide the model in balancing the priors from SCoPE and multimodal evidence. Finally, we propose a shift-aware fusion mechanism that performs precision-weighted logit integration between multimodal evidence and the speaker prior, forming a Bayesian-inspired product-of-experts formulation. This dynamic fusion allows the model to rely on historical priors when emotions persist and to prioritize multimodal evidence when shifts are likely. Experimental results show our model achieves superior performance over recent state-of-the-art models on the IEMOCAP dataset in multimodal settings.