# Causal Reasoning through Two Layers of Cognition for Improving Generalization in Visual Question Answering Source: [Causal Reasoning through Two Layers of Cognition for Improving Generalization in Visual Question Answering]() Collection index: [llms.txt]() Data updated: 2025-10-28T13:57:01.532Z Authors: Trang Nguyen, Naoaki Okazaki Published: 2023-10-09T05:07:58.000Z ## Abstract Generalization in Visual Question Answering (VQA) requires models to answer questions about images with contexts beyond the training distribution. Existing attempts primarily refine unimodal aspects, overlooking enhancements in multimodal aspects. Besides, diverse interpretations of the input lead to various modes of answer generation, highlighting the role of causal reasoning between interpreting and answering steps in VQA. Through this lens, we propose Cognitive pathways VQA (CopVQA) improving the multimodal predictions by emphasizing causal reasoning factors. CopVQA first operates a pool of pathways that capture diverse causal reasoning flows through interpreting and answering stages. Mirroring human cognition, we decompose the responsibility of each stage into distinct experts and a cognition-enabled component (CC). The two CCs strategically execute one expert for each stage at a time. Finally, we prioritize answer predictions governed by pathways involving both CCs while disregarding answers produced by either CC, thereby emphasizing causal reasoning and supporting generalization. Our experiments on real-life and medical data consistently verify that CopVQA improves VQA performance and generalization across baselines and domains. Notably, CopVQA achieves a new state-of-the-art (SOTA) on PathVQA dataset and comparable accuracy to the current SOTA on VQA-CPv2, VQAv2, and VQA RAD, with one-fourth of the model size. ## Recorded benchmark results A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage. ## Original sources and implementation [Original paper]() [PDF]()