发现掩码扩散模型先出结论再编理由,强行思考反而降低准确率。
Reasoning or Rationalization? The Role of Justifications in Masked Diffusion Models for Fact Verification
- 模型早期快速锁定答案,后期补理由,理由是事后解释。
- 强制延迟结论导致准确率从86.2%降至71.9%,因错误理由干扰判断。
- 56%错误结论被模型合理化,说明理由质量直接影响最终判断。
与自回归模型不同,掩码扩散语言模型(MDLMs)同时优化所有序列位置,这引发了关于其在需要有理有据的判断任务中如何处理推理过程的问题。本研究探讨了MDLM在事实验证任务中的推理机制,考察理由是否为真实推理或事后合理化。我们发现,MDLM通常在扩散过程早期就确定结论,并将其作为全局锚点,而理由生成尚未完成。关键的是,通过延迟结论解封实施“先思考后下结论”约束,反而使性能显著下降,准确率从86.2%降至71.9%;这是因为累积的理由标记引入不一致,覆盖了最初正确的预测。干预实验显示,模型在56%的情况下会合理化错误的强制结论,且结论对理由质量有强因果依赖:理由被破坏时准确率为57.3%,而使用真实理由时高达97.1%。这一因果依赖解释了强制反思导致性能下降的原因——模型在生成噪声理由的过程中不断调整判断,逐步削弱初始正确判断。研究结果表明,在使用MDLM进行事实验证时,延长思考可能适得其反,会因理由生成过程引入的噪声稀释准确的早期预测。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Unlike autoregressive models, which generate tokens sequentially and benefit from reasoning-before-answering strategies such as Chain-of-Thought, Masked Diffusion Language Models (MDLMs) refine all sequence positions simultaneously, raising questions about how these models handle tasks requiring justified verdicts. In this work, we investigate the dynamics of MDLM reasoning on fact verification, examining whether justifications serve as genuine reasoning or post-hoc rationalization. We observe that MDLMs typically converge on a verdict early in the diffusion process, treating it as a global anchor that is resolved before the justification is complete. Crucially, enforcing a reasoning-first constraint via delayed verdict unmasking actively degrades performance, dropping accuracy from 86.2% to 71.9% as accumulating justification tokens introduce inconsistencies that override initially correct predictions. Interventional experiments reveal that the model rationalizes incorrect forced verdicts in 56% of cases, and that verdicts are strongly causally dependent on justification quality (57.3% accuracy with corrupted justifications vs. 97.1% with ground-truth). This causal dependence explains the degradation under forced deliberation: as the model generates noisy justification tokens, it conditions on them, gradually overriding its initially correct assessment. Our findings suggest that for fact verification with MDLMs, extended deliberation can be counterproductive, risking the dilution of accurate early predictions with noise introduced during justification generation.
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