Numerical Investigation of Sequence Modeling Theory using Controllable Memory Functions

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Jiang, Haotian, Bao, Zeyu, Wang, Shida, Li, Qianxiao
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866909642342268928
author Jiang, Haotian
Bao, Zeyu
Wang, Shida
Li, Qianxiao
author_facet Jiang, Haotian
Bao, Zeyu
Wang, Shida
Li, Qianxiao
contents The evolution of sequence modeling architectures, from recurrent neural networks and convolutional models to Transformers and structured state-space models, reflects ongoing efforts to address the diverse temporal dependencies inherent in sequential data. Despite this progress, systematically characterizing the strengths and limitations of these architectures remains a fundamental challenge. In this work, we propose a synthetic benchmarking framework to evaluate how effectively different sequence models capture distinct temporal structures. The core of this approach is to generate synthetic targets, each characterized by a memory function and a parameter that determines the strength of temporal dependence. This setup allows us to produce a continuum of tasks that vary in temporal complexity, enabling fine-grained analysis of model behavior concerning specific memory properties. We focus on four representative memory functions, each corresponding to a distinct class of temporal structures. Experiments on several sequence modeling architectures confirm existing theoretical insights and reveal new findings. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in advancing theoretical understanding and highlight the importance of using controllable targets with clearly defined structures for evaluating sequence modeling architectures.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_05678
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Numerical Investigation of Sequence Modeling Theory using Controllable Memory Functions
Jiang, Haotian
Bao, Zeyu
Wang, Shida
Li, Qianxiao
Machine Learning
The evolution of sequence modeling architectures, from recurrent neural networks and convolutional models to Transformers and structured state-space models, reflects ongoing efforts to address the diverse temporal dependencies inherent in sequential data. Despite this progress, systematically characterizing the strengths and limitations of these architectures remains a fundamental challenge. In this work, we propose a synthetic benchmarking framework to evaluate how effectively different sequence models capture distinct temporal structures. The core of this approach is to generate synthetic targets, each characterized by a memory function and a parameter that determines the strength of temporal dependence. This setup allows us to produce a continuum of tasks that vary in temporal complexity, enabling fine-grained analysis of model behavior concerning specific memory properties. We focus on four representative memory functions, each corresponding to a distinct class of temporal structures. Experiments on several sequence modeling architectures confirm existing theoretical insights and reveal new findings. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in advancing theoretical understanding and highlight the importance of using controllable targets with clearly defined structures for evaluating sequence modeling architectures.
title Numerical Investigation of Sequence Modeling Theory using Controllable Memory Functions
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.05678