PsyDefDetect Shared Task: Detecting Defense Mechanisms in Emotional Support Dialogues
Deadline: Apr 05, 2026
Participate in the PsyDefDetect shared task to detect and classify psychological defense mechanisms in emotional support dialogues.
The PsyDefDetect shared task, co-located with BioNLP @ ACL 2026, invites researchers to identify and classify psychological defense mechanisms in emotional support dialogues. Grounded in the Defense Mechanism Rating Scales (DMRS) framework, this task aims to advance the understanding of unconscious defensive functioning in text.
Key aspects include:
- Analyzing the PSYDEFCONV dataset, comprising 200 dialogues and 4,709 utterances.
- Classifying utterances into 9 categories based on defensive maturity levels.
- Capturing subtle linguistic cues in informal and context-dependent emotional dialogues.
Important dates:
- Dec 15, 2025: Task announced.
- Dec 20, 2025: Task launch on CodaBench.
- Mar 15, 2026: Evaluation period starts.
- Apr 05, 2026: Evaluation period ends.
For more information, visit the task website, join the Discord server, or check the CodaBench page.
Tags: PsyDefDetect, BioNLP, ACL 2026, Defense Mechanisms, NLP, Emotional Support Dialogues, DMRS
