PREFAB: PREFerence-based Affective Modeling for Low-Budget Self-Annotation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Moon, Jaeyoung, Choi, Youjin, Park, Yucheon, Melhart, David, Yannakakis, Georgios N., Kim, Kyung-Joong
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Moon, Jaeyoung
Choi, Youjin
Park, Yucheon
Melhart, David
Yannakakis, Georgios N.
Kim, Kyung-Joong
author_facet Moon, Jaeyoung
Choi, Youjin
Park, Yucheon
Melhart, David
Yannakakis, Georgios N.
Kim, Kyung-Joong
contents Self-annotation is the gold standard for collecting affective state labels in affective computing. Existing methods typically rely on full annotation, requiring users to continuously label affective states across entire sessions. While this process yields fine-grained data, it is time-consuming, cognitively demanding, and prone to fatigue and errors. To address these issues, we present PREFAB, a low-budget retrospective self-annotation method that targets affective inflection regions rather than full annotation. Grounded in the peak-end rule and ordinal representations of emotion, PREFAB employs a preference-learning model to detect relative affective changes, directing annotators to label only selected segments while interpolating the remainder of the stimulus. We further introduce a preview mechanism that provides brief contextual cues to assist annotation. We evaluate PREFAB through a technical performance study and a 25-participant user study. Results show that PREFAB outperforms baselines in modeling affective inflections while mitigating workload (and conditionally mitigating temporal burden). Importantly PREFAB improves annotator confidence without degrading annotation quality.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_13904
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle PREFAB: PREFerence-based Affective Modeling for Low-Budget Self-Annotation
Moon, Jaeyoung
Choi, Youjin
Park, Yucheon
Melhart, David
Yannakakis, Georgios N.
Kim, Kyung-Joong
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
Self-annotation is the gold standard for collecting affective state labels in affective computing. Existing methods typically rely on full annotation, requiring users to continuously label affective states across entire sessions. While this process yields fine-grained data, it is time-consuming, cognitively demanding, and prone to fatigue and errors. To address these issues, we present PREFAB, a low-budget retrospective self-annotation method that targets affective inflection regions rather than full annotation. Grounded in the peak-end rule and ordinal representations of emotion, PREFAB employs a preference-learning model to detect relative affective changes, directing annotators to label only selected segments while interpolating the remainder of the stimulus. We further introduce a preview mechanism that provides brief contextual cues to assist annotation. We evaluate PREFAB through a technical performance study and a 25-participant user study. Results show that PREFAB outperforms baselines in modeling affective inflections while mitigating workload (and conditionally mitigating temporal burden). Importantly PREFAB improves annotator confidence without degrading annotation quality.
title PREFAB: PREFerence-based Affective Modeling for Low-Budget Self-Annotation
topic Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.13904