CARE: Cognitive-reasoning Augmented Reinforcement for Emotional Support Conversation
- URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05122v1
- Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 03:19:50 GMT
- Title: CARE: Cognitive-reasoning Augmented Reinforcement for Emotional Support Conversation
- Authors: Jie Zhu, Yuanchen Zhou, Shuo Jiang, Junhui Li, Lifan Guo, Feng Chen, Chi Zhang, Fang Kong,
- Abstract summary: Emotional Support Conversation (ESC) plays a vital role in alleviating psychological stress and providing emotional value through dialogue.<n>Recent studies have largely focused on data augmentation and synthetic corpus construction.<n>We propose textbfCARE, a novel framework that strengthens reasoning in ESC without relying on large-scale synthetic data.
- Score: 25.567786529759406
- License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
- Abstract: Emotional Support Conversation (ESC) plays a vital role in alleviating psychological stress and providing emotional value through dialogue. While recent studies have largely focused on data augmentation and synthetic corpus construction, they often overlook the deeper cognitive reasoning processes that underpin effective emotional support. To address this gap, we propose \textbf{CARE}, a novel framework that strengthens reasoning in ESC without relying on large-scale synthetic data. CARE leverages the original ESC training set to guide models in generating logically coherent and supportive responses, thereby explicitly enhancing cognitive reasoning. Building on this foundation, we further employ reinforcement learning to refine and reinforce the reasoning process. Experimental results demonstrate that CARE significantly improves both the logical soundness and supportive quality of responses, advancing the development of empathetic, cognitively robust, and human-like emotional support systems.
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