Simulating Couple Conflict: Designing A Multi-Agent System for Therapy Training and Practice
Canwen Wang, Angela Chen, Catherine Bao, Siwei Jin, Holly Swartz, Tongshuang Wu, Robert E Kraut, Haiyi Zhu

TL;DR
This paper introduces a multi-agent simulation system for couples therapy training that models emotional dynamics and conflict patterns, providing a realistic and controllable environment for therapists to practice and improve their skills.
Contribution
It presents a novel multi-modal, stateful simulation framework that models therapy as a multi-agent dynamical system with structured interaction stages, enhancing realism and control.
Findings
Therapists more accurately identified state transitions in the simulation.
Participants rated the system as more realistic and responsive than baseline.
The simulation effectively models demand-withdraw conflict patterns.
Abstract
Couples therapy requires managing complex, evolving emotional dynamics between partners, but traditional training methods for therapists, like role-play, lack realism, consistency, and control. We present a multi-modal simulation that models therapy as a controlled, multi-agent dynamical system with structured interaction stages. Therapists practice with a pair of client-agents who go through six evolving stages that respond to therapist actions. This simulation enables practice with demand-withdraw conflict patterns in a closed-loop environment. The simulation uses a sense-plan-act architecture: it detects the therapist's input, updates agents' interaction states based on psychotherapy theory and transcript analysis, and generates realistic verbal and emotional responses. In an experiment with 21 licensed U.S. therapists, participants more accurately identified state transitions and…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
