Affective Computing

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Overview

Affective computing studies how machines can infer and work with emotion, mood, engagement, and related states from speech, facial and bodily behavior, text, and physiological signals. Common approaches include supervised classifiers, multimodal fusion, temporal models that track changing affect, and appraisal-based or language-model methods for interpreting context. Applications span healthcare and wearables, education, human-robot interaction, and emotionally responsive digital tools, with evaluation increasingly extending from controlled datasets to naturalistic conversations and daily-life settings. A central challenge is that emotional cues are ambiguous and vary across people and cultures, so accuracy must be balanced with uncertainty, fairness, privacy, and respect for the limits of what a system can infer about an individual.

Latest papers

CardsList

141 papers14 papers in the last four weeks, down 18% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. An Intelligent Decision Support System for Emotion Monitoring using Microscopic Fixational Dynamics

    Sep 1, 2026Xiangyu Shen, Feiyang Deng, Zijian Dai +4Eye TrackingEmotion Recognition

    College of Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Central South University of Forestry and Technology, Changsha, 410004, Hunan, China · Chow Yei Ching School of Graduate Studies, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 999077, Hong Kong · College of Computer and Mathematics, Central South University of Forestry and Technology, Changsha, 410004, Hunan, China +1

  2. PAMoR: Parameterized Affective Motion Generation in Real Time for Humanoid Robots

    Aug 28, 2026Yan Pan, Lingfan Bao, Tianhu Peng +1Robot Motion GenerationValence-Arousal Modeling

    Department of Computer Science, University College London, London, UK

  3. AffectOmni: RL-Verifiable People-Centric Grounded Affective Reasoning for Social and Art-Related Scenes

    Aug 24, 2026Yibo Wang, Rui Yang, Jisheng Dang +7VLM ReasoningAffective Computing

    Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China · Hainan University, Haikou, China · School of Computing, National University of Singapore, Singapore

  4. EmotionDialogCN: A Spontaneous Multimodal Dataset for Mandarin Emotional Dialogue

    Aug 21, 2026Yi Zheng, Yifan Xu, Yan Zhou +8Affective ComputingEmotion Recognition in Conversations

  5. Closing the Affective Loop: Multimodal Speaker-Listener Emotion-Dynamics-Aware Empathetic Social Robots

    Aug 17, 2026Zi Haur Pang, Casey Kennington, Tatsuya KawaharaEmotion-Aware Dialogue GenerationSpoken Dialogue Systems

    Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Japan · Computer Science Department, Boise State University, United States

  6. ProFocus: Interpreting Affective Experience in Artistic Images with Progressive Visual Focusing

    Aug 14, 2026Zhiyan Zhang, Zicheng Yan, Jianqi Chen +3Emotion RecognitionAffective Computing

    University of Science and Technology of China Hefei, Anhui, China · Anhui University Hefei, Anhui, China

  7. PsychoAgent: An Affect-Sensitive Cognitive Architecture for Conflict-Aware Memory in LLM Agents

    Aug 7, 2026Mohammad Amanlou, Parham Abed Azad, Farbod Davoodi +3Cognitive Architectures for AI AgentsLLM Agent Memory

    School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. · Department of Computer Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. · Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO, USA. +1

  8. NTDH: Complex Reasoning for Comprehensive Affective Analysis

    Aug 5, 2026Tianlei Zhu, Zhiwei Liu, Yuyan Wang +2CoT ReasoningAffective Computing

    Columbia University, New York, NY, USA · Department of Computer Science, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

  9. Learning to Predict Performance-induced Emotion Differences in Classical Piano Music

    Jul 30, 2026Joann Ching, Gerhard WidmerValence-Arousal ModelingEmotion Recognition

    Institute of Computational Perception, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria · LIT AI Lab, Linz Institute of Technology, Austria

  10. Knowledge-Guided Multimodal Reasoning over Interacting Streams for Video-Level Ambivalence and Hesitancy Recognition

    Jul 28, 2026Podakanti Satyajith Chary, Barath Parthiban, Pranesh Velmurugan +2Multimodal ReasoningMultimodal Emotion Recognition

    Department of Engineering Science, IIT Hyderabad, India · Department of Biomedical Engineering, IIT Hyderabad, India

  11. Ordered Network Analysis of Epistemic Emotions during Collaborative Problem Solving

    Jul 25, 2026Sifatul Anindho, Videep Venkatesha, Jaclyn Ocumpaugh +1Affective Computing

    Colorado State University, Fort Collins CO 80523, USA · University of Houston, Houston TX 77104, USA

  12. Explainable graph attention network for stress recognition (StressGAT) via differential action units

    Jul 23, 2026Thomas Kassiotis, Stefanos Gkikas, Nikolaos Smyrnis +1Graph Attention NetworksFacial Expression Recognition

    Department of Electronic Engineering Hellenic Mediterranean University Chania, Greece · Honda Research Institute Japan Wako City, Japan · University Mental Health, Neurosciences and Precision Medicine, Research Institute “COSTAS STEFANIS” 2nd Department of Psychiatry, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Athens, Greece +1

  13. Associative Emotional Learning in Convolutional Neural Networks

    Jul 21, 2026Seowung Leem, Andreas Keil, Mingzhou Ding +1Convolutional Neural NetworksAssociative Memory

    J. Crayton Pruitt Family Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA · Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA +3

  14. Team RAS in 11th ABAW Competition: Multimodal Ambivalence Recognition Approach

    Jul 16, 2026Elena Ryumina, Maxim Markitantov, Alexandr Axyonov +4Multimodal FusionAmbivalence and Hesitancy Recognition

    St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences · St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SPC RAS), St. Petersburg, Russia · HSE University, St. Petersburg, Russia +1

  15. Audio-Text Cross-Attention with Psycholinguistic Support Features for Ambivalence/Hesitancy Recognition

    Jul 15, 2026Luiz F. B. F. Martins, Rodrigo W. Pisaia, Matheus M. Girardi +5Ambivalence and Hesitancy RecognitionAffective Computing

    Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil

  16. AffectFlow-DINO: Uncertainty-Aware Multi-Task Affect Estimation via Conditional Rectified Flow

    Jul 14, 2026Salah Eddine Bekhouche, Abdellah Zakaria Sellam, Fadi Dornaika +1Multi-Task LearningFacial Action Unit Detection

    University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Spain · Department of Innovation Engineering, University of Salento & Institute of Applied Sciences and Intelligent Systems (CNR), Italy · Faculty of Data Science and Computing, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, Malaysia

  17. A Calibrated Multimodal Ensemble for Ambivalence/Hesitancy Recognition: System Description and Private-Test Submission Strategy

    Jul 13, 2026Josep Cabacas-Maso, Ismael Benito-Altamirano, Carles VenturaAmbivalence and Hesitancy RecognitionAffective Computing

    eHealth Center, Faculty of Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunicactions, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, 08016 Barcelona, Spain · MIND/IN2UB, Department of Electronic and Biomedical Engineeering, Universitat de Barcelona, 08028 Barcelona, Spain · Institute of Semiconductor Technology (IHT) & Laboratory for Emerging Nanometrology (LENA), Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

  18. Causal Supervision of Attention for Affective Behaviour Analysis

    Jul 13, 2026Nemanja Rašajski, Konstantinos Makantasis, Antonios Liapis +1Causal Representation LearningFacial Action Unit Detection

    Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta, Malta · AI Department, University of Malta, Malta

  19. Simple Features and Honest Calibration for Ambivalence and Hesitancy Recognition in Video

    Jul 13, 2026Vikas Kumar, Aditya Mishra, Haroon R. LoneMultimodal Emotion RecognitionAmbivalence and Hesitancy Recognition

    Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Bhopal, India

  20. Personalized Emotional Intelligence in Generative AI through Symbolic Affective Reasoning

    Jul 12, 2026Qing Lin, Mengmi ZhangLLM PersonalizationNeuro-Symbolic AI

    College of Computing and Data Science, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

  21. Benchmarking Dynamic Affective Reasoning: A Viewer-Centric Video Emotion Dataset

    Jul 11, 2026Zhiyan Zhang, Peipei Song, Jinpeng Hu +3Video ReasoningCausal Reasoning in Videos

    University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China · Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China

  22. Video2Reaction: Mapping Video to Audience Reaction Distribution in the Wild

    Jul 8, 2026Trang Nguyen, Sidong Zhang, Shiv Shankar +4Multimodal Emotion RecognitionAffective Computing

    University of Massachusetts Amherst, 130 Governors Drive, Amherst, MA, USA · Dolby Laboratories, 1275 Market Street, San Francisco, CA, USA

  23. Where do LLMs Fall Short in CBT-Guided Affective Reasoning?

    Jul 3, 2026Vaishnavi Sinha, Pooja Guttal, Pranay Deep Reddy Katike +5Mental HealthClinical Language Model Evaluation

    Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, UMBC · Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, UC Irvine · Department of Psychology, UMBC +1

  24. Automatic Detection of Stress from Speech in the Trier Social Stress Test

    Jul 1, 2026Hanna Drimalla, Wieland R. Cremer, Christine Kraus +1Speech Emotion RecognitionAffective Computing

    Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Group, Faculty of Technology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany. · Department of Cognitive Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany.

  25. Who Determines the Meaning of an Emotion? Affective Sovereignty as an Epistemic Consequence of Measurement Limits

    Jun 30, 2026Keito InoshitaHuman Oversight of AIEmotion Recognition

    Faculty of Business and Commerce, Kansai University, 3-3-35 Yamate-cho, Suita, 564-8680, Osaka, Japan.

  26. A Comparative Study on Affective Cues in Text Embeddings Across Psychological Emotion Theories

    Jun 27, 2026Fabio Ciani, Harald Schweiger, Emilia Parada-Cabaleiro +1Text EmbeddingsText Embedding Evaluation

    Department of Electronics, Information, and Bioengineering, Polytechnic University of Milan · Multimedia Mining and Search Group, Institute of Computational Perception, Johannes Kepler University Linz · Department of Music Pedagogy, Nuremberg University of Music +1

  27. Generative Learning as a Tool to Improve Perception of Emotional Body Motion Expressions

    Jun 27, 2026Huakun Liu, Miao Cheng, Xin Wei +6Human Motion GenerationConditional Generative Modeling

    Nara Institute of Science and Technology · Tohoku University

  28. State-specific respiratory signatures for affective and stress recognition: Interpretable respiratory markers, autocorrelation lags, and compact CNN models

    Jun 25, 2026Andrei Velichko, Mehmet Tahir HuyutWearable SensingConvolutional Neural Networks

    Institute of Physics and Technology, Petrozavodsk State University, Petrozavodsk, Russia · Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, Faculty of Medicine, Erzincan Binali Yildirim University, Erzincan, Turkey

  29. Data-Driven Decoding of Russell's Circumplex Model of Affect

    Jun 15, 2026Amdjed Belaref, Samir Sadok, Zineb Noumir +1Multimodal EmbeddingRepresentation Geometry in Language Models

    Alten, France · CentraleSup´elec IETR UMR CNRS 6164, France

  30. From Affect Prediction to Affect Forecasting: Evidence for Distinct Information Sources in Longitudinal Text

    Jun 15, 2026Sadia Noor, Seemab Latif, Raja Khurram Shahzad +1Time Series ForecastingValence-Arousal Modeling

    School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan · Department of Communication, Quality Management and Information Systems, Mid Sweden University, Ostersund, Sweden