SR$^2$-LoRA: Self-Rectifying Inter-layer Relations in Low-Rank Adaptation for Class-Incremental Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wan, Fengqiang, Lin, Yipeng, Lv, Kan, Yang, Yang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Wan, Fengqiang
Lin, Yipeng
Lv, Kan
Yang, Yang
author_facet Wan, Fengqiang
Lin, Yipeng
Lv, Kan
Yang, Yang
contents Pre-trained models with parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) have demonstrated promising potential for class-incremental learning (CIL), yet catastrophic forgetting still persists when adapting models to new tasks. In this paper, we present a novel perspective on catastrophic forgetting through the analysis of inter-layer relation drift, i.e., the progressive disruption of relationships among layer-wise representations during the learning of new tasks. We theoretically show that the increase of such drift reduces the classification margins of previously learned tasks, thereby degrading overall model performance. To address this issue, we propose \underline{S}elf-\underline{R}ectifying inter-layer \underline{R}elation Low-Rank Adaptation~(SR$^2$-LoRA), a simple yet effective method that mitigates catastrophic forgetting by constraining inter-layer relation drift. Specifically, SR$^2$-LoRA constructs the relation matrices induced by the previous and current models on current-task samples, and aligns the corresponding singular values. We further theoretically show that this alignment exhibits greater robustness to estimation perturbations than direct entry-wise alignment. Extensive experiments on standard CIL benchmarks demonstrate that SR$^2$-LoRA effectively mitigates catastrophic forgetting, with its advantages becoming more pronounced as the number of tasks increases. Code is available in the \href{https://github.com/FqWan24/SR-2-LoRA}{repository}.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_07420
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SR$^2$-LoRA: Self-Rectifying Inter-layer Relations in Low-Rank Adaptation for Class-Incremental Learning
Wan, Fengqiang
Lin, Yipeng
Lv, Kan
Yang, Yang
Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Pre-trained models with parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) have demonstrated promising potential for class-incremental learning (CIL), yet catastrophic forgetting still persists when adapting models to new tasks. In this paper, we present a novel perspective on catastrophic forgetting through the analysis of inter-layer relation drift, i.e., the progressive disruption of relationships among layer-wise representations during the learning of new tasks. We theoretically show that the increase of such drift reduces the classification margins of previously learned tasks, thereby degrading overall model performance. To address this issue, we propose \underline{S}elf-\underline{R}ectifying inter-layer \underline{R}elation Low-Rank Adaptation~(SR$^2$-LoRA), a simple yet effective method that mitigates catastrophic forgetting by constraining inter-layer relation drift. Specifically, SR$^2$-LoRA constructs the relation matrices induced by the previous and current models on current-task samples, and aligns the corresponding singular values. We further theoretically show that this alignment exhibits greater robustness to estimation perturbations than direct entry-wise alignment. Extensive experiments on standard CIL benchmarks demonstrate that SR$^2$-LoRA effectively mitigates catastrophic forgetting, with its advantages becoming more pronounced as the number of tasks increases. Code is available in the \href{https://github.com/FqWan24/SR-2-LoRA}{repository}.
title SR$^2$-LoRA: Self-Rectifying Inter-layer Relations in Low-Rank Adaptation for Class-Incremental Learning
topic Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.07420