arXiv:2607.27904cs.LG2026-07

提出对比概念重要性,解释模型为何选P而非Q

Contrastive Concept Importance: Explaining Pairwise Class Decisions Through Automatically Extracted Concept Representations

论文配图:Contrastive Concept Importance: Explaining Pairwise Class Decisions Through Automatically Extracted Concept Representations
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 通过自动提取视觉概念基,计算目标类与对比类的对数差值贡献
  • 得分有正负,揭示概念是支持目标、反向对比还是双向影响
  • 适合分析误分类、类别混淆等需对比决策的场景

基于概念的解释通过语义明确的人类可理解概念来说明复杂黑箱模型的决策。为量化概念对模型输出的贡献,通常使用特征归因方法,但这些方法多针对单一输出类,仅回答“为何是P?”这类非对比问题。在误分类、类别混淆和低置信度预测等情形下,更自然的问题应是“为何是P而非Q?”。本文提出对比概念重要性(CCI),将目标类与对比类之间的对数差异归因于自动提取的视觉概念基中的概念。所得分数为带符号值,表明概念是支持目标类还是对比类,并可分解为目标类对数和对比类对数的独立效应。这使我们能区分全局重要概念与仅影响类别对差异的概念,识别其作用是共享、单向或直接对比。我们在ImageNet类别对上使用CRAFT风格概念基,通过插入/删除曲线、对数分解分析及语义类别层级结构评估该方法。结果表明,对比概念重要性揭示了普通概念重要性无法捕捉的类别对特异性模型行为,且高度对比性概念可对照语义超类结构,判断其是否影响细粒度区分而非泛化类别证据。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Concept-based explanations are a prevalent way to explain the decisions of complex black-box methods through semantically meaningful, human-interpretable concepts. To attribute the contribution of such concepts to a model's decisions, feature attribution methods are used to quantify how strongly each concept contributes to a model output. These attributions are typically computed for a single output class and therefore answer a non-contrastive "why P?" question. In many situations, however, such as cases of misclassification, class confusion, and low-margin predictions, the more natural question to ask is "why P rather than Q?". We introduce contrastive concept importance (CCI), which attributes the logit margin between a target class and a contrast, or foil, class to concepts in an automatically extracted visual concept basis. The resulting scores are signed, indicating whether a concept supports the target over the foil or the foil over the target, and can be decomposed into target-logit and foil-logit effects. This makes it possible to distinguish globally important concepts from concepts that specifically influence a class-pair distinction, including whether their effect is shared, one-sided, or directly contrastive. We evaluate the method on ImageNet class pairs using CRAFT-style concept bases, insertion and deletion curves, logit-wise decomposition analysis, and semantic class hierarchy. The results show that contrastive concept importance reveals class-pair-specific model behavior that is not captured by ordinary concept importance alone, and that highly contrastive concepts can be evaluated against semantic superclass structure to assess whether they affect fine-grained distinctions rather than broad category evidence.

概念解释对比归因视觉模型

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