Paper ID: 2311.09661

Evolving Domain Adaptation of Pretrained Language Models for Text Classification

Yun-Shiuan Chuang, Yi Wu, Dhruv Gupta, Rheeya Uppaal, Ananya Kumar, Luhang Sun, Makesh Narsimhan Sreedhar, Sijia Yang, Timothy T. Rogers, Junjie Hu

Adapting pre-trained language models (PLMs) for time-series text classification amidst evolving domain shifts (EDS) is critical for maintaining accuracy in applications like stance detection. This study benchmarks the effectiveness of evolving domain adaptation (EDA) strategies, notably self-training, domain-adversarial training, and domain-adaptive pretraining, with a focus on an incremental self-training method. Our analysis across various datasets reveals that this incremental method excels at adapting PLMs to EDS, outperforming traditional domain adaptation techniques. These findings highlight the importance of continually updating PLMs to ensure their effectiveness in real-world applications, paving the way for future research into PLM robustness against the natural temporal evolution of language.

Submitted: Nov 16, 2023