信息管理与商业智能系学术讲座（5月26日）

题目：Emotionally-Aware Conversational Agents: Design and Application in Mental Health Counseling

讲座嘉宾：亚利桑那州立大学 助理教授  Dr. Tongxin Zhou

主持人：信息管理与商业智能系 刘子博

时间：2025年5月26日（周一）10:00 am - 11:00 am

地点：李达三楼104室

摘要：

Emotions are critical in counseling conversations, shaping how individuals communicate, build trust, and regulate distress. Yet most AI-driven conversational agents, including fine-tuned LLMs, react passively to user input, failing to track emotional patterns or anticipate future shifts. Knowing how to appropriately recognize and respond to emotional states is an essential ability in emotionally charged contexts. To address this challenge, we propose a novel framework that uses a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) to model users’ latent emotional states and adapt responses accordingly. By integrating Thompson Sampling for response planning, our emotionally aware chatbot dynamically balances exploration and exploitation to maximize long-term engagement. We aim to evaluate our system in psychological counseling intake sessions by tracking emotional states and user engagement through behavioral data and user feedback. This work advances emotionally adaptive AI, offering a principled, forward-looking approach to improving trust and responsiveness in mental health support systems.

简介：

Dr. Zhou is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University. She received her doctoral degree in Information Systems from University of Washington at Seattle. Her research interest lies in the transformational impact of information technology, with specific focuses on digital healthcare and eCommerce domains. She conducts research using multidisciplinary methodologies such as econometrics, machine learning, and statistical modeling. Her works have been published in Management Science and Information Systems Research, and have been recognized as a finalist in 2022 ISS Nunamaker-Chen Dissertation Award Competition, 2018 and 2020 CHITA (Conference on Health IT and Analytics) Best Student Paper Competition, and 2018 INFORMS eBusiness Best Paper Competition.