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Modelling Two Emotion Regulation Strategies as Key Features of Therapeutic Empathy

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Emotion Modeling

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 8750))

Abstract

Computational models of affective processes have allowed the construction of synthetic characters able to produce empathic behaviours. The use of empathy, as a strategy to enhance engagement and cooperation with human pairs has proved good results in different application domains. Mental care is a particular area where the use of empathic virtual characters would offer several advantages facilitating the self-treatment management. Empathic responses in counselling and psychotherapy differ from “natural” empathy produced in everyday situations. Therapeutic empathy requires an emotional involvement of the therapist with the patient and an emotional detachment for a more objective appraisal of the situation. This paper introduces a model of emotion regulation as the first steps to get therapeutic empathy responses in a virtual agent constructed to support the treatment of major depression. The modelling of two specific strategies of emotion regulation based on Gross theory (cognitive change and response modulation) is described.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Five people, two males and three females, who recovered from depression were recruited to use the system during a week in daily sessions with a length between 5 to 8 min.

  2. 2.

    Measured through standardised questionnaires such as the Beck Depression Inventory II.

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Acknowledgements

This paper reflects only the author’s views. The European Community is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein. This research is carried out within the EU-FP7 Project “Help4Mood—A Computational Distributed System to Support the Treatment of Patients with Major Depression” (ICT-248765).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ITACA Institute, Biomedical Informatics Group, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, Valencia, Spain

    Juan Martínez-Miranda, Adrián Bresó & Juan Miguel García-Gómez

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  1. Juan Martínez-Miranda
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  2. Adrián Bresó
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  3. Juan Miguel García-Gómez
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Correspondence to Juan Martínez-Miranda .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Tibor Bosse

  2. Delft University of Technology, Delft, Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands

    Joost Broekens

  3. University of Lisbon, Porto Salvo, Portugal

    João Dias

  4. Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Janneke van der Zwaan

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Martínez-Miranda, J., Bresó, A., García-Gómez, J.M. (2014). Modelling Two Emotion Regulation Strategies as Key Features of Therapeutic Empathy. In: Bosse, T., Broekens, J., Dias, J., van der Zwaan, J. (eds) Emotion Modeling. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8750. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12973-0_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12973-0_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-12972-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-12973-0

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