A Deep Learning Approach to Modeling Empathy in Addiction Counseling

Abstract

Motivational interviewing is a goal-oriented psychotherapy, employed in cases such as addiction, that aims to help clients explore and resolve their ambivalence about their problem. In motivational interviewing, it is desirable for the counselor to communicate empathy towards the client to promote better therapy outcomes. In this paper, we propose a deep neural network (DNN) system for predicting counselors' session level empathy ratings from transcripts of the interactions. First, we train a recurrent neural network mapping the text of each speaker turn to a set of task-specific behavioral acts that represent local dynamics of the client-counselor interaction. Subsequently, this network is used to initialize lower layers of a deep network predicting session level counselor empathy rating. We show that this method outperforms training the DNN end-to-end in a single stage and also outperforms a baseline neural network model that attempts to predict empathy ratings directly from text without modeling turn level behavioral dynamics. Index Terms: behavioral signal processing, recurrent neural networks, word embedding, motivational interviews 1 Note: we italicize empathy to distinguish this specific operational definition from colloquial definitions.

Language Features for Automated Evaluation of Cognitive Behavior Psychotherapy Sessions

“…Although most of the research efforts focus on the therapist's language and speech, it has been shown that examining patient's language can be beneficial for specific behavior cues [9]. More recently, text-only approaches to assess MI have been possible thanks to deep learning models [10][11][12][13].…”

A Review of Deep Learning Methods and Applications for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

“…This type of model architecture allows successful learning from long sequences, helping to capture diverse time scales and remote dependencies. Practical aspects on the use of LSTMs and other deep learning architectures can be found in [18].…”

"It's hard to argue with a computer"

“…The Counselor Observer Ratings Expert for Motivational Interviewing (CORE-MI) is an automated coding and visualization system that provides report-card like feedback on psychotherapists’ adherence with MI [24]. CORE-MI combines speech and language processing with automated coding and interactive visualization to help counselors and trainers identify strengths and areas for improvement (Figure 1).…”