Compound Emotions

How the five-turn resolver produces scored compound-emotion signals from acoustic, transcript, and behavioral evidence.

Compound emotions are turn-level analytical signals. The resolver combines several weak indicators so consumers do not have to interpret a categorical acoustic score, sentiment value, or behavior in isolation.

The resolver can return multiple {name, score} items for one caller turn. A score is the result of a deterministic rule, not a calibrated probability or clinical confidence measure.

Turn-Gated Architecture

The resolver runs after each final caller transcript. It keeps the five most recent caller-turn snapshots and evaluates the newest snapshot in the context of that window.

Each snapshot currently carries:

• The most recent segment's mapped categorical acoustic score distribution
• Rolling valence, arousal, and dominant runtime label
• The latest available transcript sentiment and toxicity values
• Whether the turn interrupted agent speech
• Word count and the silence before the turn
• The empathy tier already assigned to the turn

Dominance does not participate in the current live resolver.

Rules add signals to a shared result set rather than forming an override chain. If more than one rule produces the same name, the resolver keeps the strongest score, normalizes the returned range, removes weak results, and returns a bounded list in descending order.

Acoustic Dyads

Dyad rules use co-activation in the newest caller turn's mapped categorical score distribution. Both component scores must contribute; a single strong category is not enough to produce the pair.

Co-Activation	Compound
Joy + Calmness	Contentment
Sadness + Anger	Bitterness
Sadness + Fear	Despair
Sadness + Disgust	Remorse
Anger + Disgust	Contempt
Fear + Surprise	Awe
Joy + Surprise	Delight
Anger + Fear	Conflict

The non-emotional placeholder mapped from other and unknown is excluded from dyad scoring.

Temporal Trajectory

Trajectory rules compare rolling valence and arousal across the current five-turn window. Directional changes can appear with less history than sustained-state signals.

Signal	Evidence Pattern
Deteriorating	Meaningful negative movement in valence across the window
Recovering	Meaningful positive movement in valence
Escalating	Meaningful increase in arousal
Resignation	Sustained negative valence, mostly low arousal, and recent negative transcript sentiment
Frustration	Sustained negative valence with mostly high arousal
Serenity	Repeated positive valence with low arousal
Elation	Repeated positive valence with high arousal
Ambivalence	Multiple changes in valence direction

Resignation's sentiment check is intentional cross-channel corroboration. Negative low-energy telephony audio alone does not produce the signal.

Behavioral Rules

Behavioral rules inspect recent caller turns and require corroborating evidence rather than a behavior alone:

Signal	Evidence Pattern
Impatience	Repeated recent interruptions plus negative valence
Withdrawal	Repeated terse turns plus negative transcript sentiment
Disengagement	Repeated long pauses plus low arousal
Distress	Repeated recent turns assigned a higher empathy tier

These rules return their own scored items. They do not rewrite another compound into labels such as "Bitter Impatience" or "Resigned Withdrawal."

Linguistic Rules

The newest available transcript analysis is compared with the rolling acoustic state:

Signal	Evidence Pattern
Cold Hostility	Elevated toxicity with low arousal
Aggression	Elevated toxicity with higher arousal
Masked Distress	Strongly negative transcript sentiment with neutral or positive acoustic valence
Sarcasm	Negative transcript sentiment paired with positive acoustic valence

These are score relationships, not transcript phrase matching. For example, the Sarcasm rule does not search for phrases such as "oh great"; it detects positive acoustic valence paired with sufficiently negative transcript sentiment.

Current Context Boundary

The resolver can represent context-related evidence, but the current live turn path does not supply the completed tool-failure and outcome signals needed for its contextual rules. Do not treat Process Frustration, Helplessness, or Relief as current live outputs.

Where Results Appear

Compound results are attached to the caller turn when the result list is non-empty. They are also published as a separate compound_emotion observer event with:

• compounds - the scored result array
• turn_index - the caller-turn index that produced it

At call end, call intelligence retains the strongest observed score for each compound name and stores a bounded, sorted aggregate. The terminal summary does not preserve a full compound timeline or choose one authoritative compound for the call.

Empathy classification happens before the snapshot and does not consume compound output. Compounds are therefore observability and terminal-intelligence evidence, not a second empathy control loop.