提出CGRL框架,提升图神经网络在分布外场景下的节点分类鲁棒性。
CGRL: Causal-Guided Representation Learning for Node-Level Out-of-Distribution Generalization
- 基于任务几何目标构建因果图,用干预方法分离因果与非因果信号。
- 在多个数据集上显著优于基线模型,且有效缓解预测表示的不稳定性。
- 适合需要高鲁棒性的图学习场景,如跨领域节点分类任务。
图神经网络在图任务中表现优异,但在分布外(OOD)场景下准确率显著下降。这是由于模型易捕捉环境噪声和虚假相关,而非稳定的因果机制,导致预测表示不稳定。现有基于环境不变性或因果推理的方法在节点分类任务中效果有限,因未显式建模任务所需的细粒度潜在几何结构。我们观察到一种名为Info-Jitter的训练不稳定性现象:预测表示与真实标签间的互信息在训练过程中持续波动。为此,我们构建了针对节点分类任务的因果图,利用do-演算阻断由环境噪声引发的非因果路径,推导出去混淆的干预目标及变分下界,将表示解耦为类内与类间成分。提出因果引导表征学习(CGRL)框架,包含两个核心模块:一是多分支重加权表征学习(RRL)模块,通过学习因果调制矩阵,在消息传递中增强因果信号、抑制环境噪声;二是结合类内聚合、类间分离、基于能量的重建与监督预测的优化策略,规范潜在空间以实现鲁棒的节点级泛化。在多个基准数据集上的实验表明,CGRL在多种分布偏移下均优于强基线,并有效缓解Info-Jitter现象。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) deliver strong performance on graph tasks, but their accuracy drops significantly under out-of-distribution (OOD) scenarios. Under distribution shifts, GNNs often fit environmental noise and spurious correlations instead of stable causal mechanisms, leading to weak OOD robustness and unstable predictive representations. Existing solutions based on environment invariance or causal reasoning are insufficient for node classification, as they do not explicitly model the fine-grained latent geometry required by the task. We further observe a training instability named Info-Jitter, where the mutual information between predictive representations and ground-truth labels fluctuates throughout training. To address these issues, we construct a node-classification-specific causal graph derived from the task's geometric objective. Using do-calculus to block non-causal paths caused by environmental noise, we derive a deconfounded interventional objective and a variational lower bound to disentangle representations into intra-class and inter-class components. We then propose Causal-Guided Representation Learning (CGRL), a framework with two core modules. First, a multi-branch re-weighted representation learning (RRL) module learns a causal modulation matrix to amplify causal signals and suppress environmental noise during message passing. Second, an optimization strategy combining intra-class aggregation, inter-class separation, energy-based reconstruction and supervised prediction regularizes the latent space for robust node-level generalization. Experiments on multiple benchmark datasets show that CGRL outperforms strong baselines across various distribution shifts and effectively mitigates the Info-Jitter phenomenon.
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