@inproceedings{kim-etal-2025-mirror,
    title = "{MIRROR}: Multimodal Cognitive Reframing Therapy for Rolling with Resistance",
    author = "Kim, Subin  and
      Kim, Hoonrae  and
      Lee, Jihyun  and
      Jeon, Yejin  and
      Lee, Gary",
    editor = "Christodoulopoulos, Christos  and
      Chakraborty, Tanmoy  and
      Rose, Carolyn  and
      Peng, Violet",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing",
    month = nov,
    year = "2025",
    address = "Suzhou, China",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-emnlp/2025.emnlp-main.751/",
    pages = "14851--14880",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-332-6",
    abstract = "Recent studies have explored the use of large language models (LLMs) in psychotherapy; however, text-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) models often struggle with client resistance, which can weaken therapeutic alliance. To address this, we propose a multimodal approach that incorporates nonverbal cues, which allows the AI therapist to better align its responses with the client{'}s negative emotional state.Specifically, we introduce a new synthetic dataset, Mirror (Multimodal Interactive Rolling with Resistance), which is a novel synthetic dataset that pairs each client{'}s statements with corresponding facial images. Using this dataset, we train baseline vision language models (VLMs) so that they can analyze facial cues, infer emotions, and generate empathetic responses to effectively manage client resistance.These models are then evaluated in terms of both their counseling skills as a therapist, and the strength of therapeutic alliance in the presence of client resistance. Our results demonstrate that Mirror significantly enhances the AI therapist{'}s ability to handle resistance, which outperforms existing text-based CBT approaches.Human expert evaluations further confirm the effectiveness of our approach in managing client resistance and fostering therapeutic alliance."
}