arXiv:2511.16767cs.LG2025-11被引 5

大模型处理带文本的图数据时,结构信息反而可能拖后腿。

When Structure Doesn't Help: LLMs Do Not Read Text-Attributed Graphs as Effectively as We Expected

  • 仅用节点文本描述,大模型已表现良好
  • 多数结构编码策略增益微弱甚至降低效果
  • 适合关注语义而非结构的图任务研究者

图能统一表达语义内容与关系结构,适用于分子建模、引用网络和社交图等场景。大语言模型(LLMs)在理解自然语言和融合跨模态信号方面表现优异,激发了其在图推理中的应用潜力。近期工作通过模板化图结构或使用图神经网络(GNNs)编码结构信息来探索这一方向。本研究系统考察不同结构编码策略对LLM在文本属性图上性能的影响。令人意外的是,实验表明:(i) 仅依赖节点文本描述,LLM在多个任务中已具备强性能;(ii) 多数结构编码策略带来边际收益甚至负面影响。我们证明,在强大语言模型背景下,显式结构先验往往不必要,有时甚至适得其反。这与传统图学习范式显著不同,提示需重新思考结构在大模型时代的表示与利用方式。本研究旨在系统挑战‘结构天然有益’这一基本假设,为图学习开启以语义为中心的新路径。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Graphs provide a unified representation of semantic content and relational structure, making them a natural fit for domains such as molecular modeling, citation networks, and social graphs. Meanwhile, large language models (LLMs) have excelled at understanding natural language and integrating cross-modal signals, sparking interest in their potential for graph reasoning. Recent work has explored this by either designing template-based graph templates or using graph neural networks (GNNs) to encode structural information. In this study, we investigate how different strategies for encoding graph structure affect LLM performance on text-attributed graphs. Surprisingly, our systematic experiments reveal that: (i) LLMs leveraging only node textual descriptions already achieve strong performance across tasks; and (ii) most structural encoding strategies offer marginal or even negative gains. We show that explicit structural priors are often unnecessary and, in some cases, counterproductive when powerful language models are involved. This represents a significant departure from traditional graph learning paradigms and highlights the need to rethink how structure should be represented and utilized in the LLM era. Our study is to systematically challenge the foundational assumption that structure is inherently beneficial for LLM-based graph reasoning, opening the door to new, semantics-driven approaches for graph learning.

图神经网络大模型语义理解

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