A4 Refereed article in a conference publication
Multimodal-to-Semantics Large Language Model Framework for Loneliness Assessment
Authors: Chen, Chenxin; Azimi, Iman; Rahmani, Amir M.; Liljeberg, Pasi
Editors: N/A
Conference name: IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing
Publication year: 2026
Book title : 2026 IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing Workshops and Other Affiliated events (SmartComp Companion)
First page : 19
Last page: 24
ISBN: 979-8-3195-4417-9
eISBN: 979-8-3195-4416-2
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/SmartComp-Companion70724.2026.00020
Publication's open availability at the time of reporting: No Open Access
Publication channel's open availability : No Open Access publication channel
Web address : https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11627559
Continuous loneliness assessment is important for mental health monitoring and early intervention. Existing multimodal methods primarily rely on supervised machine learning models trained on population-level patterns, which require substantial amounts of labelled data and may fail to capture individual baseline differences, leading to underestimation of high-risk states. Our study proposes a Multimodal-to-Semantics Large Language Model (M2S-LLM) framework for assessing loneliness levels. The M2S-LLM transforms multimodal physiological and behavioural signals from wearable devices and smartphones into baseline-relative semantic representations, and incorporates limited historical Ecological Momentary Assessment labels as a lightweight local knowledge base for LLM-based contextual reasoning. Experimental results on a real-world dataset show that the M2S-LLM substantially reduces loneliness-level underestimation and yields a more balanced error distribution in the high-loneliness range. The results indicate its potential for personalised and risk-sensitive loneliness assessment under limited-label conditions.
Funding information in the publication:
This work has been co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under
the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions grant agreement No. 101177564 (HAIF).