提出顺序回放可更好缓解遗忘,尤其在任务差异大时。
Unlocking the Power of Rehearsal in Continual Learning: A Theoretical Perspective
- 对比并发与顺序回放,理论分析揭示顺序更优
- 任务越不相似,顺序回放效果越显著,减少遗忘
- 设计混合回放方法,适合差异大的持续学习场景
回放类方法通过存储并重复训练历史数据来缓解持续学习中的灾难性遗忘。尽管当前普遍采用将新旧数据同时训练的并发回放策略,但其是否最优尚不明确。受人类学习中分步复习启发,本文首次对过参数线性模型下的回放式持续学习进行理论分析,比较并发回放与顺序回放(先训新任务,再逐个重访旧任务)的性能。结果表明:当任务间相似度较低时,顺序回放能更有效降低遗忘并提升泛化能力。基于此,提出一种混合回放策略——对相似任务采用并发回放,对不相似任务采用顺序回放,并在深度神经网络上验证其优于标准并发回放。本工作为回放机制提供了首个系统的理论支撑。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Rehearsal-based methods have shown superior performance in addressing catastrophic forgetting in continual learning (CL) by storing and training on a subset of past data alongside new data in current task. While such a concurrent rehearsal strategy is widely used, it remains unclear if this approach is always optimal. Inspired by human learning, where sequentially revisiting tasks helps mitigate forgetting, we explore whether sequential rehearsal can offer greater benefits for CL compared to standard concurrent rehearsal. To address this question, we conduct a theoretical analysis of rehearsal-based CL in overparameterized linear models, comparing two strategies: 1) Concurrent Rehearsal, where past and new data are trained together, and 2) Sequential Rehearsal, where new data is trained first, followed by revisiting past data sequentially. By explicitly characterizing forgetting and generalization error, we show that sequential rehearsal performs better when tasks are less similar. These insights further motivate a novel Hybrid Rehearsal method, which trains similar tasks concurrently and revisits dissimilar tasks sequentially. We characterize its forgetting and generalization performance, and our experiments with deep neural networks further confirm that the hybrid approach outperforms standard concurrent rehearsal. This work provides the first comprehensive theoretical analysis of rehearsal-based CL.
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