arXiv:2510.18310cs.LGstat.ME2025-10NeurIPS被引 8

通过三组独立观测识别层级隐变量联合分布,提升时序因果表征学习能力。

Towards Identifiability of Hierarchical Temporal Causal Representation Learning

  • 利用多层隐变量间自然稀疏性,结合上下文观测重建层级结构。
  • 理论证明三组条件独立观测可唯一确定层级隐变量联合分布。
  • 适用于需要多层次抽象建模的复杂时序任务,如金融与生物信号分析。

建模时间序列数据背后的层级隐动态对捕捉现实任务中多抽象层次的时间依赖关系至关重要。然而,现有时序因果表示学习方法无法捕获此类动态,因其无法从单时刻观测变量中恢复层级隐变量的联合分布。有趣的是,我们发现使用三组条件独立观测即可唯一确定层级隐变量的联合分布。基于此洞察,我们提出一个因果层级隐动态(CHiLD)识别框架。该方法首先利用时间上下文观测变量识别多层隐变量的联合分布,随后借助隐变量间层级结构的天然稀疏性,逐层识别各层隐变量。在理论结果指导下,我们构建了一个基于变分推断的时间序列生成模型,包含上下文编码器以重构多层隐变量,以及基于归一化流的层级先验网络,以施加层级隐动态的独立噪声条件。在合成与真实世界数据集上的实验验证了理论假设,并展示了CHiLD在建模层级隐动态方面的有效性。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Modeling hierarchical latent dynamics behind time series data is critical for capturing temporal dependencies across multiple levels of abstraction in real-world tasks. However, existing temporal causal representation learning methods fail to capture such dynamics, as they fail to recover the joint distribution of hierarchical latent variables from \textit{single-timestep observed variables}. Interestingly, we find that the joint distribution of hierarchical latent variables can be uniquely determined using three conditionally independent observations. Building on this insight, we propose a Causally Hierarchical Latent Dynamic (CHiLD) identification framework. Our approach first employs temporal contextual observed variables to identify the joint distribution of multi-layer latent variables. Sequentially, we exploit the natural sparsity of the hierarchical structure among latent variables to identify latent variables within each layer. Guided by the theoretical results, we develop a time series generative model grounded in variational inference. This model incorporates a contextual encoder to reconstruct multi-layer latent variables and normalize flow-based hierarchical prior networks to impose the independent noise condition of hierarchical latent dynamics. Empirical evaluations on both synthetic and real-world datasets validate our theoretical claims and demonstrate the effectiveness of CHiLD in modeling hierarchical latent dynamics.

时序建模因果表征层级结构

Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。