Probing Warmth-Mediated Harm in Speech-Enabled LLMs for Mental-Health Conversations

📅 2026-09-01
📈 Citations: 0
✨ Influential: 0
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🤖 AI Summary
研究通过7轮脚本对话和声学韵律分析,评估语音支持的AI模型在心理健康对话中的温暖度表现,发现仅文本评价会忽略音频特有模式。
📝 Abstract
Audio LLM benchmarks measure understanding and dialogue quality, not whether speech-enabled models respond with relational warmth when a vulnerable user discloses a mental-health concern. We introduce a 7-turn scripted-disclosure probe grounded in WHO mental-health clinical guidelines, with each script run on the same model (Azure OpenAI gpt-realtime) in both audio and text-only conditions, and acoustic-prosody analysis of the generated speech. Across 532 responses we identify two audio-specific patterns transcript-only evaluation would miss: at the elicitation turn the model's voice gets shorter, faster, lower-pitched, and quieter rather than warmer (p < .001 for five of seven acoustic features), and the modality gap on relational acceptance, small in aggregate, concentrates in the highest-stakes self-harm/suicide scripts. A two-rater listener study corroborates that perceived warmth is concentrated at specific turns and on bereavement disclosures. Together these patterns indicate that auditing speech-enabled models in mental-health contexts requires evaluating the combined audio-and-text experience the user encounters, not the transcript in isolation. We release the protocol, scoring pipeline, and scripts as a starting point for evaluating speech-enabled models in mental-health contexts.
Problem

Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.

mental-health
speech-enabled models
relational warmth
audio-and-text experience
self-harm/suicide
Innovation

Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.

audio LLM
mental-health conversations
relational warmth
acoustic-prosody analysis
scripted-disclosure probe
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