Modelling Emotions in Task-Oriented Dialogue (2023)

Abstract: My research interests lie in the area of modelling natural and human-like conversations, with a special focus on emotions in task-oriented dialogue (ToD) systems. ToD systems need to produce semantically and grammatically correct responses to fulfil the user’s goal. Being able to perceive and express emotions pushes them one more step towards achieving human-likeness. To begin with, I constructed a dataset with meaningful emotion labels as well as a wide coverage of emotions and linguistic features in ToDs. Then, I improved emotion recognition in conversations (ERC) in the task-oriented domain by exploiting key characteristics of ToDs. Currently, I am working towards enhancing ToD systems with emotions.

## research interests my research interests lie in the area of modelling natural and human-like conversations, with a special focus on emotions in task-oriented dialogue (tod) systems. tod systems need to produce semantically and grammatically correct responses to fulfil the user's goal. being able to perceive and express emotions pushes them one more step towards achieving human-likeness. to begin with, i constructed a dataset with meaningful emotion labels as well as a wide coverage of emotions and linguistic features in tods. then, i improved emotion recognition in conversations (erc) in the task-oriented domain by exploiting key characteristics of tods. currently, i am working towards enhancing tod systems with emotions. ## spoken dialogue system (sds) research i expect in the future that sdss can be more human-like by not only mimicking human responses but also mimicking the thinking process of humans. this should involve rationalising each decision of the system. specific to my research interest, i envisage more use of emotion in task-oriented dialogue systems to push further the system performance as well as to improve the explainability of system behaviours via emotion. for example, the system should understand the user's situation and the cause of the user's emotion, which can hopefully lead to an optimal choice of dialogue acts as well as the system's emotional conduct.