arXiv subjects

Manuela González-González

Publications and source records attributed to Manuela González-González.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Textualized and Feature-based Models for Compound Multimodal Emotion Recognition in the Wild

Systems for multimodal emotion recognition (ER) are commonly trained to extract features from different modalities (e.g., visual, audio, and textual) that are combined to predict individual basic emotions. However, compound emotions often occur in real-world scenarios, and the uncertainty of recognizing such complex emotions over diverse modalities is challenging for feature-based models. As an alternative, emerging large language models (LLMs) like BERT and LLaMA can rely on explicit non-verbal cues that may be translated from different non-textual modalities (e.g., audio and visual) into text. Textualization of modalities augments data with emotional cues to help the LLM encode the interconnections between all modalities in a shared text space. In such text-based models, prior knowledge of ER tasks is leveraged to textualize relevant non-verbal cues such as audio tone from vocal expressions, and action unit intensity from facial expressions. Since the pre-trained weights are publicly available for many LLMs, training on large-scale datasets is unnecessary, allowing to fine-tune for downstream tasks such as compound ER (CER). This paper compares the potential of text- and feature-based approaches for compound multimodal ER in videos. Experiments were conducted on the challenging C-EXPR-DB dataset in the wild for CER, and contrasted with results on the MELD dataset for basic ER. Our results indicate that multimodal textualization provides lower accuracy than feature-based models on C-EXPR-DB, where text transcripts are captured in the wild. However, higher accuracy can be achieved when the video data has rich transcripts. Our code is available.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2026

Multimodal Ambivalence/Hesitancy Recognition in Videos for Personalized Digital Health Interventions

Using behavioural science, health interventions focus on behaviour change by providing a framework to help patients acquire and maintain healthy habits that improve medical outcomes. In-person interventions are costly and difficult to scale, especially in resource-limited regions. Digital health interventions offer a cost-effective approach, potentially supporting independent living and self-management. Automating such interventions, especially through machine learning, has recently gained considerable attention. Ambivalence and hesitancy (A/H) play a primary role for individuals to delay, avoid, or abandon health interventions. A/H are subtle and conflicting emotions that place a person in a state between positive and negative evaluations of a behaviour, or between acceptance and refusal to engage in it. They manifest as affective inconsistency across modalities or within a modality, such as language, facial, vocal expressions, and body language. While experts can be trained to recognize A/H, integrating them into digital health interventions is costly and less effective. Automatic A/H recognition is therefore critical for the personalization and cost-effectiveness of digital health interventions. Here, we explore the application of deep learning models for A/H recognition in videos, a multi-modal task by nature. In particular, this paper covers three learning setups: supervised learning, unsupervised domain adaptation for personalization, and zero-shot inference via large language models (LLMs). Our experiments are conducted on the unique and recently published BAH video dataset for A/H recognition. Our results show limited performance, suggesting that more adapted multi-modal models are required for accurate A/H recognition. Better methods for modeling spatio-temporal and multimodal fusion are necessary to leverage conflicts within/across modalities.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2026

BAH Dataset for Ambivalence/Hesitancy Recognition in Videos for Digital Behavioural Change

Ambivalence and hesitancy (A/H), closely related constructs, are the primary reasons why individuals delay, avoid, or abandon health behaviour changes. They are subtle and conflicting emotions that sets a person in a state between positive and negative orientations, or between acceptance and refusal to do something. They manifest as a discord in affect between multiple modalities or within a modality, such as facial and vocal expressions, and body language. Although experts can be trained to recognize A/H as done for in-person interactions, integrating them into digital health interventions is costly and less effective. Automatic A/H recognition is therefore critical for the personalization and cost-effectiveness of digital behaviour change interventions. However, no datasets currently exist for the design of machine learning models to recognize A/H. This paper introduces the Behavioural Ambivalence/Hesitancy (BAH) dataset collected for multimodal recognition of A/H in videos. It contains 1,427 videos with a total duration of 10.60 hours, captured from 300 participants across Canada, answering predefined questions to elicit A/H. It is intended to mirror real-world digital behaviour change interventions delivered online. BAH is annotated by three experts to provide timestamps that indicate where A/H occurs, and frame- and video-level annotations with A/H cues. Video transcripts, cropped and aligned faces, and participant metadata are also provided. Since A and H manifest similarly in practice, we provide a binary annotation indicating the presence or absence of A/H. Additionally, this paper includes benchmarking results using baseline models on BAH for frame- and video-level recognition, and different learning setups. The limited performance highlights the need for adapted multimodal and spatio-temporal models for A/H recognition. The data and code are publicly available.

cs.CV↗