Counterfactual Learning

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9 papers in the last four weeks, against 2 the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

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When Instructions Retrieve Trajectories: Diagnosing and Mitigating Generalization Failures in VLA Models
Sep 30, 2026Hung-Jen Chen, Yu-Hsun Hou, Yan-Hong Chen +4Counterfactual Learning Imitation
National Tsing Hua University · National Taiwan University
Counterfactual Rollout Replay: Forkable Environments as Free Process Rewards for Software Engineering Agents
Sep 27, 2026Yuanhao Li, Hongbo Wang, Xuhong Chen +2Counterfactual Learning Software Engineering
State Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China · University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Towards Eliminating Catastrophic Forgetting in the Curriculum Learning of Math Reasoning Tasks
Sep 27, 2026Zengyan Yang, Yangyang Wu, Kai Huang +3Catastrophic Forgetting Curriculum
Zhejiang University · Ant Group
Dual-Frontier: When Can an Agent Trust Its World Model?
Sep 22, 2026Huatai Zhu, Qiang Chen, Ziqian Kou +5World Models Counterfactual Learning
Central South University · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · Xiangjiang Laboratory +2
Conditional Tensor Diffusion: Distributional Counterfactual Learning and Inference
Sep 22, 2026Xinbing Kong, Zeyu Li, Junfan Mao +1Causal Inferences Conditional Distribution
Southeast University · University of Science and Technology of China
OnlineWM: Causality-Aware Active Online Learning for Effective World Modeling
Sep 20, 2026Yikun Miao, Fangqi Zhu, Quanxin Shou +6Efficient World-Action Model World Models
Department of Computer Science and Engineering The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Hong Kong SAR, China
Counterfactual Reasoning for Robust Visual Question Answering
Sep 15, 2026Truong-Binh Duong, Thanh-Ngan Tran, Ngoc-Thao Nguyen +1Knowledge-Based Visual Question Answering Visual Question Answering Benchmarks
Faculty of Information Technology, University of Science, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam · 2Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Measuring the Value of World-Model Updates: A Counterfactual Utility Protocol for Continual Adaptation
Sep 11, 2026Anqi Peter Li, Kaden KimCounterfactual Learning World Models
Substrate Labs · UC Berkeley
Temporal-Causal Inference for Reinforcement Learning via Automata Learning
Sep 7, 2026Jan Corazza, Daniil Kaminskyi, Simon Lutz +4Markov Decision Processes Counterfactual Learning
Research Center Trustworthy Data Science and Security, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, 44227, Germany. · School for Engineering of Matter, Transport, and Energy at Arizona State University, Tempe, Az 85281, USA.
CoBRA: Learning Tool-Use Boundaries via Counterfactual Margins
Sep 1, 2026Wenhao Zou, Xianglong Liu, Wendong Bi +3Large Language Model Tool Use Counterfactual Learning
WeChat, Tencent Inc, Beijing, China · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
FACT: Failure-Aware Causal Training for World-Action Models
Aug 10, 2026Quanquan Peng, Yutong Liang, Rui Yan +2Efficient World-Action Model Action Generation
University of California San Diego
A Distribution Mapping Approach to Counterfactually Fair Reinforcement Learning
Aug 9, 2026Jianhan Zhang, Jitao Wang, John D. Piette +3Counterfactual Learning Distributional Reinforcement Learning
University of Michigan · LSE
GAUGE: Granularity-Adaptive Counterfactual Gating of Evidence for Incomplete Multimodal Classification
Aug 6, 2026Yunping Shi, En Yu, Kairui Guo +1Multimodal Classification Counterfactual Learning
Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute (AAII), University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia
SAFECAST: Robust Failure Detection for VLA Policies with Contrast-Set Training and Calibration
Aug 4, 2026Harshitha Rajaprakash, Aditeya Prajapati, Rong Xue +2Counterfactual Learning Safer
University of Southern California, Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Robust Counterfactual Policy Optimisation via Nondeterministic Causal Models
Aug 3, 2026Jessica Lally, Milad Kazemi, Nicola Paoletti +2Counterfactual Learning Causal Modeling
1King’s College London · 2Durham University · University College London
StyleForge: Indoor Furniture Styling by Counterfactual Reasoning in a Hypergraph Field
Aug 3, 2026Lingwei Dang, Shishuo Shang, Pan Liu +9Stylization Counterfactual Learning
School of Software Engineering, South China University of Technology · School of Information Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University
CHILL-Harness: Counterfactual Harness Learning for Efficient Reasoning in Long-Horizon Agents
Jul 28, 2026Jiarun Fu, Lizhong Ding, Sida Chen +6Long-Horizon Agents Agent Harness
School of Computer Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
What do Reward Models Memorize?
Jul 27, 2026Ivo Verhoeven, Pushkar Mishra, Ekaterina ShutovaProgress Reward Modeling Preference Datasets
ILLC, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands · Google DeepMind, London, United Kingdom
Counterfactual Motion Reliability Learning for Robust UAV Tracking
Jul 25, 2026Yuehai ChenUnmanned Aerial Vehicle Detection Multi-Object Tracking
Faculty of Electronics and Information Engineering and the Institute for Low-Altitude Regulation, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Counterfactual Shapley Credit Assignment
Jul 18, 2026Mingxuan Li, Kai-Zhan Lee, Elias BareinboimCredit Assignment Potential-Based Reward Shaping
Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
Accelerating A/B-Tests with Counterfactual Estimation: Reducing Variance through Policy Overlap
Jul 16, 2026Olivier JeunenVariance Reduction Heterogeneous Treatment Effects
Independent Researcher Antwerp, Belgium
Counterfactual Optimal Action Trees (COAT): Interpretable Prescriptive Policies from Observational Data
Jul 15, 2026Youssef Drissi, Markus Ettl, Shivaram Subramanian +2Counterfactual Learning
IBM Research
Resist and Update: Counterfactual Report Coordinates for Incentive-Compatible LLMs
Jul 14, 2026Sen Yang, Yuen-Hei YeungCounterfactual Learning Incentives
Stern School of Business · New York University · Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
Play Like Champions: Counterfactual Feedback Generation in Latent Space
Jun 30, 2026Andrzej Białecki, Adam Mastalerz, Han ZhouCounterfactual Learning Feedback
Warsaw University of Technology · Silesian University of Technology · University of British Columbia
From Propositional to Perceptual Asymmetry: Extending Frictive Policy Optimization to Asymmetric Partial Information Dialogue
Jun 29, 2026Yifan Zhu, Kyeongmin Rim, James PustejovskyInformation Asymmetry Asymmetry
Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA
Revocable Learned State via Process Sidecars
Jun 29, 2026John SweeneyCounterfactual Learning Prioritized Experience Replay
Sideplane AI
An Introduction to Causal Reinforcement Learning
Jun 23, 2026Elias Bareinboim, Junzhe Zhang, Sanghack LeeCausal Inferences Counterfactual Learning
Department of Computer Science Columbia University New York, USA · Graduate School of Data Science Seoul National University Seoul, Republic of Korea
CFPO: Counterfactual Policy Optimization for Multimodal Reasoning
Jun 22, 2026Zhangyuan Yu, Wanran Sun, Guangjing Yang +2Multimodal Reasoning Recent Vision-Language Models
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China.
Counterfactual learning of new adaptive instructional policies using logged data
Jun 22, 2026Samuel Girard, Sein Minn, Amel Bouzeghoub +1Contextual Bandit Framework Counterfactual Learning
SODA · Soda Team, Inria Saclay, Palaiseau, France · Pix, Paris, France +4
Machine learning modeling of hit-into-play probability and quantification of pitch sequence effects
Jun 15, 2026Ryota Takamido, Hiroki NakamotoCounterfactual Learning Summary Statistics
Sports Innovation Organization, National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Kanoya, Kanoya, Kagoshima 891-2393, Japan · Faculty of Physical Education, National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Kanoya, Kanoya, Kagoshima 891-2393, Japan
NetCause: Counterfactual Learning for Root Cause Analysis in Large-Scale Networks
Jun 11, 2026Fabien Chraim, Jian Zhang, Dominik Janzing +3Root Cause Analysis Causal Graph
Amazon Web Services, Seattle, Washington, USA
Counterfactual Transport Flows for Offline Conservative Trajectory Refinement
Jun 8, 2026Lena Krieger, Xuan Zhao, Zhuo Cao +3Model-Based Reinforcement Learning Long Refinement Trajectories
1IAS-8, Forschungszentrum J ulich, Germany · 2LMU Munich, Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML), Germany · Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University, Denmark.
VeriDrive: Verifiable Counterfactual Supervision for Cost-Efficient Vision-Language Planning
Jun 5, 2026Zikai Zhang, Hubert P. H. Shum, Toby P. BreckonPhotometric Supervision Human Driving
Department of Computer Science Durham University Stockton Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK
Policy-Conditioned Counterfactual Credit for Verifiable Reinforcement Learning of Long-Horizon Language Agents
Jun 3, 2026Renwei MengReinforcement Learning With Verifiable Reward Counterfactual Learning
Ahu
Trivium: Temporal Regret as a First-Class Objective for Causal-Memory Controllers
Jun 3, 2026Edward Y. ChangCounterfactual Learning Reward Signal
Computer Science Stanford University
Outsmarting the Chameleon: Counterfactual Decoupling for Tactical OOD Shifts in Live Streaming Risk Assessment
Jun 1, 2026Yiran Qiao, Jing Chen, Jiaqi Xu +3Out-Of-Distribution Streaming Video
Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · ByteDance China, Hangzhou, China · State Key Laboratory of AI Safety, Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences +1
On the Hidden Costs of Counterfactual Knowledge Training in LLM Unlearning
May 26, 2026Xiaotian Ye, Xiaohan Wang, Mengqi Zhang +1Large Language Model Unlearning Counterfactual Learning
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications · Huazhong University of Science and Technology · Shandong University +1
TypedCSIP: Typed Counterfactual Pretraining for Chinese Legislative Conflict Classification
May 25, 2026Yao LiuCounterfactual Learning Encoders
Chengdu University of Technology, Leshan, China
Constraint-Anchored Attribution: Feasibility-Certified Counterfactuals and Bonferroni-PAC Sufficient Subsets for Neural CO Policies
May 24, 2026Sohaib LafifiNeural Combinatorial Optimization Credit Assignment
Univ. Artois, UR 3926, Laboratoire de Génie Informatique et d’Automatique de l’Artois (LGI2A) Béthune, France
Counterfactually Safe Reinforcement Learning
May 24, 2026Jingyi Li, Peng Wu, Chengchun ShiCounterfactual Learning Optimality
Department of Statistics and Data Science, National University of Singapore · School of Mathematics and Statistics, Beijing Technology and Business University · Department of Statistics, London School of Economics and Political Science
MemAudit: Post-hoc Auditing of Poisoned Agent Memory via Causal Attribution and Structural Anomaly Detection
May 22, 2026Zhewen Tan, Yilun Yao, Huiyan Jin +9Poisoning Attacker Large Language Model
Learning Spatiotemporal Sensitivity in Video LLMs via Counterfactual Reinforcement Learning
May 21, 2026Dazhao Du, Jian Liu, Jialong Qin +7Video-Language Models Spatio-Temporal Reasoning
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · Tencent
SAGE: Scalable Automatic Gating Ensemble for Confident Negative Harvesting in Fraud Detection
May 19, 2026Sudheer Tubati, Amit GoyalFraud Detection Negative Results
Amazon Music Seattle, USA · Amazon Music San Francisco, USA
DEFLECT: Temporal Counterfactual Preference Learning for Delay-Robust Asynchronous VLAs
May 19, 2026Yixiang Zhu, Yonghao Chen, Zijie Yang +2Counterfactual Learning Inference Latency
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) · One Robotics
Form and Function: Machine Unlearning as a Problem of Misaligned States
May 17, 2026Kennon StewartMachine Unlearning Learning-Augmented Algorithms
Second Street Labs, Detroit, MI, USA · Department of Statistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
COAL: Counterfactual and Observation-Enhanced Alignment Learning for Discriminative Referring Multi-Object Tracking
May 14, 2026Shukun Jia, Shiyu Hu, Yipei Wang +3Multi-Object Tracking Counterfactual Learning
School of Automation, Southeast University, Nanjing, China · Key Laboratory of Measurement and Control of Complex Systems of Engineering, Ministry of Education, Nanjing, China · School of Physical & Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore +1
COLLATOR: Compositional Multi-Agent Orchestration with Counterfactual Reinforcement Learning
May 14, 2026Xudong Chen, Yixin Liu, Hua Wei +1Multi-Agent Orchestration Multi-Agent Large Language Model Systems
PROWL: Prioritized Regret-Driven Optimization for World Model Learning
May 11, 2026Ahmet H. Güzel, Jenny Seidenschwarz, Benjamin Graham +3Video World Models Adversarial Training
University College London AI Centre · Odyssey · University of Basel
Overcoming Catastrophic Forgetting in Visual Continual Learning with Reinforcement Fine-Tuning
May 10, 2026Meng Lou, Hanzhong Guo, Linwei Chen +1Catastrophic Forgetting Reinforcement Fine-Tuning
The University of Hong Kong · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · Hong Kong Generative AI Research and Development Center
Order-based Rehearsal Learning
May 6, 2026Yu-Xuan Tao, Tian-Zuo Wang, Zhi-Hua ZhouLayer-Selective Rehearsal Strategy Counterfactual Learning
National Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, China · School of Artifcial Intelligence, Nanjing University, China
SpecPL: Disentangling Spectral Granularity for Prompt Learning
May 6, 2026Jingtao Zhou, Xirui Kang, Feiyang Huang +1Fine-Grained Perception Vision Encoders
Department of Electrical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR.
CRAFT: Counterfactual-to-Interactive Reinforcement Fine-Tuning for Driving Policies
May 6, 2026Keyu Chen, Nanfei Ye, Yida Wang +4Counterfactual Learning Reinforcement Fine-Tuning
School of Vehicle and Mobility, Tsinghua University · Li Auto Inc
Verifiable Counterfactual Supervision for Process Reward Models
May 4, 2026Yinghui Chi, Yuanhong WangProcess Reward Model Counterfactual Learning
Jilin University
Unveiling the Backdoor Mechanism Hidden Behind Catastrophic Overfitting in Fast Adversarial Training
Apr 27, 2026Mengnan Zhao, Lihe Zhang, Tianhang Zheng +2Adversarial Training Overfitting
School of Computer Science and Technology, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China · School of Information and Communication Engineering, Dalian University of Technology (DUT), Dalian 116024, China · School of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China +1
COSAC: Counterfactual Credit Assignment in Sequential Cooperative Teams
Apr 20, 2026Shripad Deshmukh, Jayakumar Subramanian, Raghavendra Addanki +1Credit Assignment Soft Actor-Critic
College of Information and Computer Sciences University of Massachusetts Amherst · Adobe Research San Jose, CA
CiPO: Counterfactual Unlearning for Large Reasoning Models through Iterative Preference Optimization
Apr 17, 2026Junyi Li, Yongqiang Chen, Ningning DingLarge Language Model Unlearning Large Reasoning Models
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) · The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Towards Robust Endogenous Reasoning: Unifying Drift Adaptation in Non-Stationary Tuning
Apr 17, 2026Xiaoyu Yang, En Yu, Wei Duan +1Large Language Model Adaptation Multimodal Large Language Models
Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute (AAII), Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Calibration-Gated LLM Pseudo-Observations for Online Contextual Bandits
Apr 16, 2026Maksim Pershin, Ivan Golovanov, Pavel Baltabaev +1Contextual Bandit Framework Counterfactual Learning
Error-Driven Scene Editing for 3D Grounding in Large Language Models
Nov 18, 2025Yue Zhang, Zun Wang, Han Lin +53D Visual Grounding Spatial Grounding
UNC Chapel Hill · University of Michigan · Google Research
Did Models Learn Sufficiently? Attribution-Guided Training via Subset-Selected Counterfactual Augmentation
Nov 15, 2025Yannan Chen, Ruoyu Chen, Wei Wang +6Counterfactual Learning Attention-Guided Training
School of Cyber Science and Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangdong Province, China · Institute of Perception, PC Laboratory, Guangdong Province, China · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China +3

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When Instructions Retrieve Trajectories: Diagnosing and Mitigating Generalization Failures in VLA Models

Hung-Jen Chen, Yu-Hsun Hou, Yan-Hong Chen, Yan-Fu Chen+3

National Tsing Hua University · National Taiwan University

Counterfactual Learning Imitation

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Vision-language-action (VLA) models can exceed 90% success on in-distribution tasks and withstand nuisance changes that preserve the required action, yet fail under counterfactual changes that demand a different action. Aggregate robustness scores can therefore conceal a more specific failure, in which a policy responds to both language and vision yet does not combine them to select the action the task requires. We call this failure instruction-action binding. Instructions cue familiar trajectory families, and visual feedback adjusts their execution. Behavioral analyses of fine-tuned

π_{0.5}

and GR00T-N1.7 policies reveal that failed rollouts often retain the source behavior or switch to another demonstrated task. These switches show that language is not simply ignored. Readouts and interventions connect these choices to task-conditioned internal states. Our analysis of the imitation objective shows how narrow conditional action support can leave grounded and instruction-keyed solutions indistinguishable on the demonstrations. This motivates Equivariant Counterfactual Training (ECT), which acts at two levels. ECT data supply valid demonstrations in which the same instruction requires different actions in distinguishable scenes, while the ECT loss trains each demonstration with its counterpart in the same update. In a controlled LIBERO-PRO comparison, full ECT raises

π_{0.5}

's mean position-swap success from 36% to 59%. On CALVIN, where counterparts already occur in the original data, the ECT loss improves five-task completion without new demonstrations. On a real UR5e under a fixed demonstration budget, full ECT raises unseen-position success from 8% to 88%.

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