PsychoAgent: An Affect-Sensitive Cognitive Architecture for Conflict-Aware Memory in LLM Agents

Human memory retrieval is shaped not just by topical relevance but by emotional significance and unresolved conflict—a nuance missing from most LLM agent memory systems. PsychoAgent introduces a cognitive architecture that separates factual and affective memory, using a conflict-aware controller to surface emotionally salient information alongside topically relevant content. This could improve applications requiring nuanced, human-like interaction over extended periods, such as companion AI, therapeutic chatbots, or long-term personal assistants that need to track user emotional states and unresolved issues. The architecture demonstrated improved retrieval of conflict-critical memories in controlled scenarios compared to standard retrieval baselines. Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.07438