RESCUE-BENCH: Towards Relation-Aware Multi-Party Emotional Support Conversation Systems — Paper

Abstract

Existing emotional support conversation systems mainly focus on one-on-one seeker-supporter interactions and individual emotional states, leaving interpersonal relations in multi-party scenarios underexplored. In this work, we introduce relation-aware emotional support conversation, a new task that evaluates whether LLMs can capture and utilize the evolving dynamics of relationships to offer more effective emotional support. We construct RESCUE (Relation-aware Emotional Support Conversation Understanding and Evaluation Benchmark) from real couple and family interview conversations, containing 191 samples, 7,079 annotated turns, and 1,064.8 minutes of video. Based on rich annotations of socio-emotional and support-related dynamics, RESCUE defines six tasks that evaluate two core capabilities required for relation-aware emotional support: Relational Understanding and Relation-Sensitive Support. Experiments with ten LLMs show that current models perform relatively well on tasks relying on local emotional or intervention cues, but struggle with relation-intensive tasks such as relation pattern prediction, viewpoint prediction, and support strategy prediction. These findings reveal the limitations of current LLMs in modeling interpersonal relations and making relation-sensitive support decisions.

Authors 10

Haichuan Hu, Yang Xiao, Mingni Tang, Jiawen Duan, Quanjun Zhang, Congqing He, Hao Zhang, Jiashuo Wang, Johan F. Hoorn, Wenjie Li

Specification

Official page: arxiv.org/abs/2609.09657
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 6 h agohigh
Arxiv announce type: new
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 6 h agohigh
arXiv id: 2609.09657
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 6 h agohigh
Categories: cs.AI
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 6 h agohigh
PDF: arxiv.org/pdf/2609.09657
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 6 h agohigh
Primary category: cs.AI
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 6 h agohigh
Published: 11 Sept 2026
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 6 h agohigh

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6 h ago

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Authors: Haichuan Hu, Yang Xiao, Mingni Tang

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Value	Valid from → to	Status	Source	Confidence	Extractor
cs.AI	11 Sept 2026 21:03 UTC → current	current	arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1	high	deterministic

Claims are temporal and append-only: a new observation closes the previous claim (valid_to) instead of overwriting it. Conflicting claims from different sources are kept side by side and flagged — never averaged. Methodology →

11 Sept 2026
New paperPaperRESCUE-BENCH: Towards Relation-Aware Multi-Party Emotional Support Conversation Systems
New paper: RESCUE-BENCH: Towards Relation-Aware Multi-Party Emotional Support Conversation Systems
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arXiv (Atom API + RSS)	rss.arxiv.org/rss/cs.AI	feed	T1· Official	4 h ago	1

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