# Momentum Contrastive Pre-training for Question Answering

Source: [Momentum Contrastive Pre-training for Question Answering](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa70d51e209131cea4d851>)

Collection index: [llms.txt](<https://www.sota2.com/research/llms.txt>)

Data updated: 2025-10-26T01:51:52.116Z

Authors: Minda Hu, Muzhi Li, Yasheng Wang, Irwin King

Published: 2022-12-12T08:28:22.000Z

## Abstract

Existing pre-training methods for extractive Question Answering (QA) generate cloze-like queries different from natural questions in syntax structure, which could overfit pre-trained models to simple keyword matching. In order to address this problem, we propose a novel Momentum Contrastive pRe-training fOr queStion anSwering (MCROSS) method for extractive QA. Specifically, MCROSS introduces a momentum contrastive learning framework to align the answer probability between cloze-like and natural query-passage sample pairs. Hence, the pre-trained models can better transfer the knowledge learned in cloze-like samples to answering natural questions. Experimental results on three benchmarking QA datasets show that our method achieves noticeable improvement compared with all baselines in both supervised and zero-shot scenarios.

## 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](<https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.05762>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.05762.pdf>)