Modeling Interpersonal Influence of Verbal Behavior in Couples Therapy Dyadic Interactions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Markov model that captures how verbal behavior in couples influences each other, improving classification of negative behaviors and relating influence to relationship success.

Contribution

It presents a novel influence-aware Markov model for analyzing dyadic verbal behavior, enhancing behavior classification and linking influence dynamics to therapy outcomes.

Findings

The influence-aware model outperforms single-speaker models in classifying negative behaviors.

Optimal influence levels correlate with better long-term relationship outcomes.

Incorporating partner influence improves understanding of interpersonal dynamics in therapy.

Abstract

Dyadic interactions among humans are marked by speakers continuously influencing and reacting to each other in terms of responses and behaviors, among others. Understanding how interpersonal dynamics affect behavior is important for successful treatment in psychotherapy domains. Traditional schemes that automatically identify behavior for this purpose have often looked at only the target speaker. In this work, we propose a Markov model of how a target speaker's behavior is influenced by their own past behavior as well as their perception of their partner's behavior, based on lexical features. Apart from incorporating additional potentially useful information, our model can also control the degree to which the partner affects the target speaker. We evaluate our proposed model on the task of classifying Negative behavior in Couples Therapy and show that it is more accurate than the single-speaker model. Furthermore, we investigate the degree to which the optimal influence relates to how well a couple does on the long-term, via relating to relationship outcomes