Austria

Deep transformer models have been used to detect linguistic anomalies in patient transcripts for early Alzheimer’s disease (AD) screening. While pre-trained neural language models (LMs) fine-tuned on AD transcripts perform well, little research has explored the effects of the gender of the speakers represented by these transcripts. This work addresses gender confounding in dementia detection and proposes two methods: the Extended Confounding Filter and the Dual Filter, which isolate and ablate weights associated with gender. We evaluate these methods on dementia datasets with first-person narratives from patients with cognitive impairment and healthy controls. Our results show transformer models tend to overfit to training data distributions. Disrupting gender-related weights results in a deconfounded dementia classifier, with the trade-off of slightly reduced dementia detection performance.

ACL 2025

Mitigating Gender Confounding Bias from Spoken Language in Dementia Detection via Weight Masking

weight masking

dementia detection

confounding bias

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EMNLP 2024

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### Welcome to The 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2025)

Message from the General Chair: 
*It is my great pleasure and honor to welcome you to the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2025), held in beautiful Vienna, Austria, from July 27 to August 1, 2025. ACL2025continues our field’s tradition of excellence in scholarship, innovation, and inclusivity, and I am deeply grateful to the many volunteers who have worked tirelessly to bring this event to life.* 
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Welcome to The 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2025)

The attention mechanism is a fundamental component of the Transformer model, contributing to interactions among distinct tokens. In general, the attention scores are determined simply by the key-query products. However, this work's occasional trial (combining DAPE and NoPE) of including additional MLPs on attention scores without position encoding indicates that the classical key-query multiplication may limit the performance of Transformers. 
In this work, we conceptualize attention as a feature map and apply the convolution operator (for neighboring attention scores across different heads) to mimic the processing methods in computer vision. Specifically, **the main contribution of this paper is identifying and interpreting the Transformer length extrapolation problem as a result of the limited expressiveness of the naive query and key dot product, and we successfully translate the length extrapolation issue into a well-understood feature map processing problem**, which is called Convolutional Data-Adaptive Position Encoding (CDAPE).
The novel insight, which can be adapted to various attention-related models, reveals that the current Transformer architecture has the potential for further evolution. Extensive experiments demonstrate that treating attention as a feature map and applying convolution as a processing method significantly enhances Transformer performance.

DAPE V2: Process Attention Score as Feature Map for Length Extrapolation

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities and are receiving increasing attention to enhance their reasoning through scaling test-time compute. However, their application in open-ended, knowledge-intensive, complex reasoning scenarios is still limited. Reasoning-oriented methods struggle to generalize to open-ended scenarios due to implicit assumptions of complete world knowledge. Meanwhile, knowledge-augmented reasoning (KAR) methods fails to address two core challenges: 1) error propagation, where errors in early steps cascade through the chain, and 2) verification bottleneck, where the explore–exploit trade-off arises in multi-branch decision processes. To overcome these limitations, we introduce ARise, a novel framework that integrates risk assessment of intermediate reasoning states with dynamic retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) within a Monte Carlo tree search paradigm. This approach enables effective construction and optimization of reasoning plans across multiple maintained hypothesis branches. Experimental results show that ARise significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art KAR methods by up to 23.10%, and the latest RAG-equipped large reasoning models by up to 25.37%. Our project page is at https://opencausalab.github.io/ARise.

ARise: Towards Knowledge-Augmented Reasoning via Risk-Adaptive Search

Interpretation is critical for disease diagnosis, but existing models struggle to balance predictive accuracy with human-understandable rationales. While large language models (LLMs) offer strong reasoning abilities, their clinical use is limited by high computational costs and restricted multimodal reasoning ability. Small language models (SLMs) are efficient but lack advanced reasoning for integrating multimodal medical data. In addition, both LLMs and SLMs lack domain knowledge for trustworthy reasoning. Therefore, we propose ClinRaGen, enhancing SLMs by leveraging LLM-derived reasoning ability via rationale distillation and domain knowledge injection for trustworthy multimodal rationale generation. Key innovations include a sequential rationale distillation framework that equips SLMs with LLM-comparable multimodal reasoning abilities, and a knowledge-augmented attention mechanism that jointly unifies multimodal representation from time series and textual data in the same encoding space, enabling it to be naturally interpreted by SLMs while incorporating domain knowledge for reliable rationale generation. Experiments on real-world medical datasets show that ClinRaGen achieves state-of-the-art performance in disease diagnosis and rationale generation, demonstrating the effectiveness of combining LLM-driven reasoning with knowledge augmentation for improved interpretability.

Knowledge-Augmented Multimodal Clinical Rationale Generation for Disease Diagnosis with Small Language Models

We propose Powerformer, an efficient homomorphic encryption (HE)-based privacy-preserving language model (PPLM) designed to reduce computation overhead while maintaining model performance. Powerformer incorporates three key techniques to optimize encrypted computations:

1. A novel distillation technique that replaces softmax and layer normalization (LN) with computationally efficient power and linear functions, ensuring no performance degradation while enabling seamless encrypted computation.
2. A pseudo-sign composite approximation method that accurately approximates GELU and tanh functions with minimal computational overhead.
3. A homomorphic matrix multiplication algorithm specifically optimized for Transformer models, enhancing efficiency in encrypted environments.

By integrating these techniques, Powerformer based on the BERT-base model achieves a 45% reduction in computation time compared to the state-of-the-art HE-based PPLM without any loss in accuracy.

Powerformer: Efficient and High-Accuracy Privacy-Preserving Language Model with Homomorphic Encryption

Current self-correction approaches in text-to-SQL face two critical limitations: 1) Conventional self-correction methods rely on recursive self-calls of LLMs, resulting in multiplicative computational overhead, and 2) LLMs struggle to implement effective error detection and correction for monolithic SQL queries, as they fail to demonstrate the underlying reasoning path. In this work, we propose **SHARE**, a **S**LM-based **H**ierarchical **A**ction cor**RE**ction assistant that enables LLMs to perform more precise error localization and efficient correction. SHARE orchestrates three specialized Small Language Models (SLMs) in a sequential pipeline, where it first transforms monolithic SQL queries into stepwise action trajectories that reveal underlying reasoning, followed by a two-phase granular refinement. We further propose a novel hierarchical self-evolution strategy for data-efficient training. Our experimental results demonstrate that SHARE effectively enhances self-correction capabilities while proving robust across various LLMs. Furthermore, our comprehensive analysis shows that SHARE maintains strong performance even in low-resource training settings, which is particularly valuable for text-to-SQL applications with data privacy constraints.

SHARE: An SLM-based Hierarchical Action CorREction Assistant for Text-to-SQL

The evolution of Large Language Models (LLMs) has underscored the necessity for benchmarks designed for various languages and cultural contexts. To address this need for Vietnamese, we present the first Vietnamese Multitask Language Understanding (VMLU) Benchmarks. The VMLU benchmarks consist of four datasets that assess different capabilities of LLMs, including general knowledge, reading comprehension, reasoning, and conversational skills. This paper also provides an insightful overview of the current state of some dominant LLMs, such as Llama-3, Qwen2.5, and GPT-4, highlighting their performances and limitations when measured against these benchmarks. Furthermore, we provide insights into how prompt design can influence VMLU's evaluation outcomes, as well as suggest that open-source LLMs can serve as effective, cost-efficient evaluators within the Vietnamese context. By offering a comprehensive and accessible benchmarking framework, the VMLU Benchmarks aim to foster the development and fine-tuning of Vietnamese LLMs, thereby establishing a foundation for their practical applications in language-specific domains.

VMLU Benchmarks: A comprehensive benchmark toolkit for Vietnamese LLMs

The Transformer architecture has become the standard LLM architecture due to its powerful self-attention mechanism. However, it suffers from quadratic computational complexity and linear memory complexity. RNN-based LLMs have been proposed as alternatives. Yet, RNN models struggle in long-context scenarios, making it challenging to replace self-attention with RNNs. We identify the state size as a critical bottleneck, which is significantly smaller than that of Transformers with a basic context length of 2k. However, simply increasing the state size significantly raises the number of parameters and lowers training efficiency. In this paper, we propose an efficient scaling method to scale the state size of RNN models to match the 2k context length of Transformers, with small parameters overhead. Experimental results demonstrate that scaling the state size significantly enhances long-context understanding. Retrieval performance scales almost linearly with state size, with a 454M model featuring an expanded state achieving performance comparable to a 1.47B model on FDA, a recall-intensive task. These findings highlight state scaling as a promising approach for advancing RNN-based LLMs.

Scaling Laws for RNN LLM in Long-Context Scenarios with State Size

Most progress in recent coder models has been driven by supervised fine-tuning (SFT), while the potential of reinforcement learning (RL) remains largely unexplored, primarily due to the lack of reliable reward data/model in the code domain. In this paper, we address this challenge by leveraging automated large-scale test-case synthesis to enhance code model training. Specifically, we design a pipeline that generates extensive (question, test-cases) pairs from existing code data. Using these test cases, we construct preference pairs based on pass rates over sampled programs to train reward models with Bradley-Terry loss. It shows an average of 10-point improvement for Llama-3.1-8B-Ins and 5-point improvement for Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Ins through best-of-32 sampling, making the 7B model on par with 236B DeepSeek-V2.5. Furthermore, we conduct reinforcement learning with both reward models and test-case pass rewards, leading to consistent improvements across HumanEval, MBPP, BigCodeBench, and LiveCodeBench (V4). Notably, we follow the R1-style training to start from Qwen2.5-Coder-base directly and show that our RL training can improve model on HumanEval-plus by over 25% and MBPP-plus by 6% for merely 80 optimization steps. We believe our results highlight the huge potential of reinforcement learning in coder models.

ACECODER: Acing Coder RL via Automated Test-Case Synthesis

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting has become the de facto method to elicit reasoning capabilities from large language models (LLMs). However, to mitigate hallucinations in CoT that are notoriously difficult to detect, current methods such as process reward models (PRMs) or self-consistency operate as opaque boxes and do not provide checkable evidence for their judgments, possibly limiting their effectiveness. To address this issue, we draw inspiration from the idea that "the gold standard for supporting a mathematical claim is to provide a proof". We propose a retrospective, step-aware formal verification framework Safe. Rather than assigning arbitrary scores, we strive to articulate mathematical claims in formal mathematical language Lean 4 at each reasoning step and provide formal proofs to identify hallucinations. We evaluate our framework Safe across multiple language models and various mathematical datasets, demonstrating a significant performance improvement while offering interpretable and verifiable evidence. We also propose FormalStep as a benchmark for step correctness theorem proving with $30,809$ formal statements. To the best of our knowledge, our work represents the first endeavor to utilize formal mathematical language Lean 4 for verifying content generated by LLMs, aligning with the reason why formal mathematical languages were created in the first place: to provide a robust foundation for hallucination-prone human-written proofs.

Safe: Enhancing Mathematical Reasoning in Large Language Models via Retrospective Step-aware Formal Verification

Large language models (LLMs) have the potential to revolutionize smart home assistants by enhancing their ability to accurately understand user needs and respond appropriately, which is extremely beneficial for building a smarter home environment. While recent studies have explored integrating LLMs into smart home systems, they primarily focus on handling straightforward, valid single-device operation instructions. However, real-world scenarios are far more complex and often involve users issuing invalid instructions or controlling multiple devices simultaneously. These have two main challenges: LLMs must accurately identify and rectify errors in user instructions and execute multiple user instructions perfectly. To address these challenges and advance the development of LLM-based smart home assistants, we introduce HomeBench, the first smart home dataset with valid and invalid instructions across single and multiple devices in this paper. We have experimental results on 13 distinct LLMs; e.g., GPT-4o achieves only a 0.0\% success rate in the scenario of invalid multi-device instructions, revealing that the existing state-of-the-art LLMs still cannot perform well in this situation even with the help of in-context learning, retrieval-augmented generation, and fine-tuning. Our code and dataset are publicly available at https://github.com/BITHLP/HomeBench.

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Next from ACL 2025

DAPE V2: Process Attention Score as Feature Map for Length Extrapolation

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