arXiv:2606.17516cs.LGcs.AI2026-06被引 1

用合成数据训练的模型,能快速从观测数据中发现因果关系并处理隐藏混杂因素。

FoundCause: Causal Discovery with Latent Confounders from Observational Data

  • 通过可迁移统计模式学习,单次前向传播直接输出因果图。
  • 在15个真实数据集上比最强非加速方法提升9.6%的F1分数。
  • 首次实现对隐藏混杂因子的显式建模,适合需要快速推断因果结构的研究者。

由于缺乏干预信息,从观测数据中进行因果发现仍具挑战性,需同时恢复有向结构与隐藏混杂因素。我们提出FoundCause,一种完全基于合成数据训练的可加速因果发现模型,仅需一次前向传播即可将数据集映射为因果图。通过学习大规模模拟的结构性因果模型,FoundCause捕获了可迁移的统计模式,具有泛化能力。其架构包含多个因果发现的归纳偏置:使用置换不变的Transformer编码器,交替关注样本与变量以联合建模变量间依赖与单变量分布;通过统计条件注意力注入经典不对称度量的成对统计特征,引导模型识别已知因果信号;因子化解码器分离边存在性与方向,三角形精修模块支持链式与碰撞器等高阶因果模式推理;此外,基于可学习潜在标记的专门混杂因子模块显式建模隐藏共同原因,且通过掩码输入表示自然处理缺失数据。据我们所知,FoundCause是首个显式建模隐藏混杂因子的可加速因果发现方法。在15个真实世界数据集上,其优于11种经典非加速方法(如PC、GES、NOTEARS类优化)和4种加速方法,实现F1提升9.6%、AUROC提升1.2%,结构汉明距离降低18.9%,同时仅需一次前向传播完成推理。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Causal discovery from observational data remains challenging due to the need to recover directed structure and latent confounding without interventions. We propose FoundCause, an amortized causal discovery model trained entirely on synthetic data that maps datasets directly to causal graphs in a single forward pass. By learning from large collections of simulated structural causal models, FoundCause captures transferable statistical patterns that generalize beyond individual datasets. The architecture incorporates several key inductive biases for causal discovery. It uses a permutation-invariant transformer encoder with alternating attention over samples and variables to jointly model cross-variable dependence and per-variable distributions. Pairwise statistical features derived from classical asymmetry measures are injected through statistics-conditioned attention, guiding the model toward known causal signals. A factorized decoder separates edge existence from direction, while a triangular refinement module enables reasoning over higher-order causal motifs such as chains and colliders. In addition, a dedicated confounder module based on learnable latent tokens explicitly models hidden common causes, and the model explicitly handles missing data via its masked input representation. To our knowledge, FoundCause is the first amortized causal discovery approach to explicitly model latent confounding. FoundCause outperforms 11 classical non-amortized methods (e.g., PC, GES, NOTEARS-style optimization) and 4 amortized causal discovery methods on 15 real-world datasets, achieving +9.6% improvement in $F_1$, +1.2% in AUROC, and an 18.9% reduction in structural Hamming distance relative to the strongest non-amortized methods, while performing inference in a single forward pass.

因果发现隐藏混杂深度学习图神经网络

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