Valence-Arousal Modeling

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Overview

Valence-arousal modeling studies how to represent and predict affect as continuous levels of pleasantness (valence) and activation (arousal), rather than only as discrete emotion labels. Methods include regression, distance-based soft labels and probability distributions, temporal models, and reliability-aware fusion of facial, audio, text, and physiological signals. The approaches support tasks such as in-the-wild affect recognition, tracking emotional trajectories, music recommendation, and controlling emotion in generated text or motion, with benchmarks such as Aff-Wild2 used for audiovisual evaluation. A central challenge is that affect labels and cues vary across people and settings: systems must handle uncertainty and missing or noisy modalities, and it remains unclear when text or other signals help forecast future affect beyond prior trajectory patterns.

Latest papers

CardsList

35 papers2 papers in the last four weeks, down 67% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Beyond Vision-Language Models: Visual-Semantic Affect Graphs for Emotion Recognition in Artworks

    Oct 26, 2026Ngoc-Duy Mai, Ha-Thanh Nguyen, Hideaki TakedaMultimodal Emotion RecognitionValence-Arousal Modeling

    National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan · The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI, Kanagawa, Japan · Research and Development Center for Large Language Models, NII, Tokyo, Japan +1

  2. Predicting Music Valence and Arousal via Textual and Multimodal In-Context Learning in Large Language Models

    Oct 22, 2026Chi-En Dai, Chih-Pin Tan, Yi-Hsuan YangValence-Arousal ModelingEmotion Recognition

    Graduate Institute of Communication Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taiwan

  3. Modeling Shared and Individual Structure for Cross-Subject Continuous Affect Regression from EEG-fNIRS

    Oct 2, 2026Xuan Wang, Bing Wang, Shuai Chang +3Valence-Arousal ModelingAffective Computing

  4. Sectional Structure and Emotional Dynamics in Chinese Pop Songs: An Empirical Analysis of Valence-Arousal Trajectories across 100 Songs

    Sep 14, 2026Jingyi LyuValence-Arousal ModelingMusic Information Retrieval

    Communication University of China

  5. Pseudo-Label Augmentation for Affect Sensing in Small Collaborative Groups

    Sep 13, 2026Meisam Jamshidi Seikavandi, Tanya Ignatenko, Fabricio Batista Narcizo +3Affective ComputingPseudo-Labeling

    IT University of Copenhagen brAIn Lab Copenhagen, Denmark · GN Advanced Science, GN Hearing Ballerup, Denmark · GN Advanced Science, GN Hearing Glenview, Illinois, United States

  6. You Can't Prefer Emotions You Don't Sample: Intensity Undershoot in DPO-Tuned LLMs

    Sep 7, 2026Hyunwoo Kim, Usama KhalidDirect Preference OptimizationValence-Arousal Modeling

    Department of Computer Software Hanyang University, Seoul

  7. Organization of Valence and Arousal in Vision-Language Representations of Built Environments: Insights from the EMOIS Dataset

    Sep 6, 2026Madoka Yonekura, Katsunori Kohda, Nobuhiko Muramoto +1Valence-Arousal ModelingAffective Computing

    Toyota Central R&D Labs., Inc., Nagakute, Aichi 480-1192, Japan

  8. Emotion as a Distribution: Joint Valence-Arousal Probability Learning for Speaker-Independent Multimodal Emotion Recognition

    Sep 4, 2026Tingyi Lin, Wen-Ren Yang, Kuanwei ChenMultimodal Emotion RecognitionEmotion Recognition in Conversations

    Department of Electrical Engineering, National Changhua University of Education, Changhua, Taiwan · Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Central University, Taoyuan, Taiwan

  9. Replicating the Geometry of Emotion Representations in a Base Open-Weights Model

    Sep 1, 2026Adam HollowellEmotion Representation in Language ModelsRepresentation Geometry in Language Models

    University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  10. 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

  11. 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

  12. Looking for Affect in Spontaneous Finnish Speech through Linguistic Interpretability

    Jul 27, 2026Kalle Lahtinen, Liisa Mustanoja, Okko RäsänenValence-Arousal ModelingMultimodal Emotion Recognition

    Signal Processing Research Centre, Tampere University, Finland · Research Centre Plural, Tampere University, Finland

  13. Multimodal Wearable-Based Olfactory-Induced Emotion Recognition in Arousal-Valence Dimensions

    Jul 24, 2026Chen-Yang Xu, Lan Zhang, Fei-Yi Fan +2Valence-Arousal ModelingMultimodal Emotion Recognition

    School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China · Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China · School of Medical Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China

  14. Quality-Aware Multimodal Fusion Reveals Implicit Identity in Valence-Arousal Features

    Jul 23, 2026Jisu Kim, Benjamin S. RigganBiometric IdentificationValence-Arousal Modeling

    University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, NE 68588

  15. REGARD: Regional Affective Differences in Large Language Models

    Jul 22, 2026Andrei Chetvergov, Alexander Evseev, Mikhail Solovev +5Political Bias in Language ModelsValence-Arousal Modeling

    Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia · Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Moscow, Russia

  16. AffectFuse: Cross-Task Feature Fusion with Temporal Modeling for Multi-Task Affective Behavior Analysis

    Jul 17, 2026Dipit Saha, Mohammad Raihan Rashid, Shah Mohammad Abdul Mannan +2Multi-Task LearningFacial Action Unit Detection

    Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology

  17. Task-Specific Feature Fusion Method for Multi-Task Affective Behavior Analysis

    Jul 15, 2026Jiajun Sun, Zhe GaoMulti-Task LearningFacial Action Unit Detection

    Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China

  18. 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

  19. 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

  20. Where Do Models Find Happiness? Emotion Vectors in Open-Source LLMs

    Jun 25, 2026Sinie van der Ben, Raphaël Baur, Yannick Metz +1LLM InterpretabilityValence-Arousal Modeling

    Department of Computer Science, ETH, Zurich, Switzerland.

  21. VA-DPO: Valence-Arousal Direct Preference Optimization for Controllable Emotion Generation in Language Models

    Jun 23, 2026Hyunwoo KimLLM AlignmentControllable Text Generation

    Independent Researcher

  22. Aligning MusicLLM with Emotion using Instruction Tuning and Feedback-Driven Alignment

    Jun 23, 2026Takuya Hasumi, Welly NaptaliLLM AlignmentAI Alignment

    LY Corporation

  23. 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

  24. Affective Music Recommendation: A Rollout-Based World Model for Offline Preference Optimization

    May 27, 2026Audrey Chan, Aaron Labbé, Jacob Lavoie +4Valence-Arousal ModelingRecommender Systems

    LUCID Inc. · Toronto, Canada · Montréal, Canada +1

  25. From Affect to Complex Behavior: Advancing Multimodal Human-Centered AI at the 10th ABAW Workshop & Competition

    May 24, 2026Dimitrios Kollias, Panagiotis Tzirakis, Alan Cowen +10Facial Action Unit DetectionValence-Arousal Modeling

    Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), UK · Hume AI, USA · Google Deepmind, USA +7

  26. Multimodal Hidden Markov Models for Persistent Emotional State Tracking

    May 13, 2026Anamika Ragu, Aneesh JonelagaddaEmotion Recognition in ConversationsValence-Arousal Modeling

    Kaliber AI, San Mateo, California, USA.

  27. MooD: Perception-Enhanced Efficient Affective Image Editing via Continuous Valence-Arousal Modeling

    May 4, 2026Xinyi Yin, Yiduo Wang, Tingqi Hu +6Valence-Arousal ModelingImage Editing

    School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450002, China · School of Computer Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China · School of Journalism and New Media, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China +1

  28. UKP_Psycontrol at SemEval-2026 Task 2: Modeling Valence and Arousal Dynamics from Text

    Apr 23, 2026Darya Hryhoryeva, Amaia Zurinaga, Hamidreza Jamalabadi +1Valence-Arousal ModelingAffective Computing

    Ubiquitous Knowledge Processing Lab (UKP Lab), Technical University of Darmstadt · National Research Center for Applied Cybersecurity ATHENE, Germany · Psychiatric Control Systems Lab, Marburg University

  29. MeloTune: On-Device Arousal Learning and Peer-to-Peer Mood Coupling for Proactive Music Curation

    Apr 12, 2026Hongwei XuMusic RecommendationRecommender Systems

  30. Valence-Arousal Subspace in LLMs: Circular Emotion Geometry and Multi-Behavioral Control

    Apr 3, 2026Lihao Sun, Lewen Yan, Xiaoya Lu +3Emotion Representation in Language ModelsLanguage Model Steering

    University of Chicago · Shanghai AI Lab · Harvard University