From Attribution to Action: Jointly ALIGNing Predictions and Explanations

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Hauptverfasser: Hong, Dongsheng, Chen, Chao, Chen, Yanhui, Lin, Shanshan, Chen, Zhihao, Liao, Xiangwen
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Hong, Dongsheng
Chen, Chao
Chen, Yanhui
Lin, Shanshan
Chen, Zhihao
Liao, Xiangwen
author_facet Hong, Dongsheng
Chen, Chao
Chen, Yanhui
Lin, Shanshan
Chen, Zhihao
Liao, Xiangwen
contents Explanation-guided learning (EGL) has shown promise in aligning model predictions with interpretable reasoning, particularly in computer vision tasks. However, most approaches rely on external annotations or heuristic-based segmentation to supervise model explanations, which can be noisy, imprecise and difficult to scale. In this work, we provide both empirical and theoretical evidence that low-quality supervision signals can degrade model performance rather than improve it. In response, we propose ALIGN, a novel framework that jointly trains a classifier and a masker in an iterative manner. The masker learns to produce soft, task-relevant masks that highlight informative regions, while the classifier is optimized for both prediction accuracy and alignment between its saliency maps and the learned masks. By leveraging high-quality masks as guidance, ALIGN improves both interpretability and generalizability, showing its superiority across various settings. Experiments on the two domain generalization benchmarks, VLCS and Terra Incognita, show that ALIGN consistently outperforms six strong baselines in both in-distribution and out-of-distribution settings. Besides, ALIGN also yields superior explanation quality concerning sufficiency and comprehensiveness, highlighting its effectiveness in producing accurate and interpretable models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_06944
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle From Attribution to Action: Jointly ALIGNing Predictions and Explanations
Hong, Dongsheng
Chen, Chao
Chen, Yanhui
Lin, Shanshan
Chen, Zhihao
Liao, Xiangwen
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Explanation-guided learning (EGL) has shown promise in aligning model predictions with interpretable reasoning, particularly in computer vision tasks. However, most approaches rely on external annotations or heuristic-based segmentation to supervise model explanations, which can be noisy, imprecise and difficult to scale. In this work, we provide both empirical and theoretical evidence that low-quality supervision signals can degrade model performance rather than improve it. In response, we propose ALIGN, a novel framework that jointly trains a classifier and a masker in an iterative manner. The masker learns to produce soft, task-relevant masks that highlight informative regions, while the classifier is optimized for both prediction accuracy and alignment between its saliency maps and the learned masks. By leveraging high-quality masks as guidance, ALIGN improves both interpretability and generalizability, showing its superiority across various settings. Experiments on the two domain generalization benchmarks, VLCS and Terra Incognita, show that ALIGN consistently outperforms six strong baselines in both in-distribution and out-of-distribution settings. Besides, ALIGN also yields superior explanation quality concerning sufficiency and comprehensiveness, highlighting its effectiveness in producing accurate and interpretable models.
title From Attribution to Action: Jointly ALIGNing Predictions and Explanations
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.06944