Sean Dae Houlihan

dblp:211/2209 · DBLP profile ↗
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9ranked-venue papers
3as first author
7since 2021 · last 2025
0000-0001-5003-9278ORCID · verified

Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several

Artificial intelligence and machine learning · 9 · 3 first-author · 7 since 2021Applied, interdisciplinary, general and emerging computing · 8 · 3 first-author · 6 since 2021
YearPublicationVenuePosition
2025 Building computational models of social cognition in memo
Kartik Chandra, Sean Dae Houlihan, Max Kleiman-Weiner
CogSci2
2025 Cross-Cultural Emotion Concept Representation: A Comparison of English, Korean, and Large Language Model Representations
Mijin Kwon, Sean Dae Houlihan, Jonathan Phillips
CogSci2
2025 Solving strategic social coordination via Bayesian learning
Amrita Lamba, Sean Dae Houlihan, Rebecca Saxe
CogSci2
2025 Collective Emotions: Appraisal-based similarity in emotion attributions to individuals and groups
Songzhi Wu, Sean Dae Houlihan, Meghan Meyer, Jonathan Phillips
CogSci2
2025 Overcoming Multi-step Complexity in Multimodal Theory-of-Mind Reasoning: A Scalable Bayesian Planner
abstract
Theory-of-mind (ToM) enables humans to infer mental states—such as beliefs, desires, and intentions—forming the foundation of social cognition. Existing computational ToM methods rely on structured workflows with ToM-specific priors or deep model fine-tuning but struggle with scalability in multimodal environments. They remain trapped within the gravitational pull of multi-step planning complexity, failing to generalize as task demands increase. To overcome these limitations, we propose a scalable Bayesian ToM planner. It breaks down ToM complexity into stepwise Bayesian updates. Meanwhile, weak-to-strong control specializes smaller LMs to refine ToM-specific likelihood estimation, transferring their ToM reasoning behavior to larger LMs (7B to 405B) for social and world knowledge integration. This synergistic approach enables scalability, aligning large-model inference with human mental states with Bayesian principles. Extensive experiments demonstrate a 4.6% improvement in accuracy over state-of-the-art methods on multimodal ToM benchmarks, including unseen scenarios, establishing a new standard for modeling human mental states in complex environments.
Zhongyu Ouyang, Kwonjoon Lee, Nakul Agarwal, Sean Dae Houlihan, Soroush Vosoughi, Shao-Yuan Lo
ICML5
2024 Intervening on Emotions by Planning Over a Theory of Mind
Tony Chen 0003, Sean Dae Houlihan, Kartik Chandra, Josh Tenenbaum, Rebecca Saxe
CogSci2
2022 Reasoning about the antecedents of emotions: Bayesian causal inference over an intuitive theory of mind
Sean Dae Houlihan, Desmond C. Ong, Maddie Cusimano, Rebecca Saxe
CogSci1
2019 Emotion attributions echo the structure of people's intuitive theory of psychology
Sean Dae Houlihan, Max Kleiman-Weiner, Josh Tenenbaum, Rebecca Saxe
CogSci1
2018 A generative model of people's intuitive theory of emotions: inverse planning in rich social games
Sean Dae Houlihan, Max Kleiman-Weiner, Josh Tenenbaum, Rebecca Saxe
CogSci1