arXiv Computation and Language

Reconstructing the Right Episode: Evaluating Interleaved Conversational Memory Beyond Long Context

The paper introduces SCALE-QA, a new QA benchmark that tests conversational memory in flat, unsegmented multi‑topic threads by requiring agents to infer which earlier episode supports a later task decision. The dataset contains 3,000 audited questions across ten domains, uses deterministic four‑way multiple‑choice grading, and includes a runtime builder for reproducibility. The authors also propose Temporal‑Semantic Interleaved Memory Reconstruction (TSIM), a hierarchical memory stack that segments turns into coherent episodes and indexes them with deterministic summaries and cluster‑routing views, achieving significant accuracy gains over strong RAG baselines and long‑context LLMs.

arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 15

Where to Look and What to Use: Retrieve-Localize-Generate for Long-Term Conversational Memory Question Answering

arXiv:2609.07093v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) enables large language models (LLMs) to answer questions by accessing external knowledge and has been widely a...

By Yifan Wang, Xinkui Lin, Yongxiu Xu, Shen Gao, Ruochen Yang, Kun Huang, Yubin Wang, Jie Wu, Wei Liu, Jian Luan, Hongbo Xu, Shuo Shang
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 1

UTILMEM: Benchmarking Evidence Utilization in Long-Term Conversational Memory

UTILMEM is a new diagnostic benchmark that tests how conversational agents use long‑term memory, focusing on reasoning over dense histories, spotting implicitly relevant memories, synthesizing distributed evidence, and resisting interference from similar distractors. It contains 1,717 instances across five domains and evaluates a range of retrieval‑based and memory‑augmented systems. The study shows that strong performance on traditional factual recall does not guarantee effective memory utilization, highlighting a gap between retrieving information and integrating it into coherent, task‑oriented outputs.

By Peijun Qing, Fobo Shi, Soroush Vosoughi
arXiv AI
Sep 4

When Users Don't Ask: Benchmarking Context-Driven Memory Retrieval in Conversational Agents

The paper introduces LOCOMO-CONV, a conversational memory benchmark that expands on the existing LoCoMo dataset with four query styles—dialog, implicit, counterfactual, and composed—designed to evaluate memory systems in realistic conversational settings. Experiments across five memory systems reveal that conversational framing uncovers significant retrieval gaps missed by traditional QA benchmarks, particularly for implicit and composed queries, and that strong retrieval does not necessarily translate into higher response quality. The study also highlights silent grounding in implicit queries, where memory enhances contextual grounding without explicitly presenting the gold fact, suggesting a need for reasoning-based memory elaboration.

By Wen-Yu Chang, Yun-Nung Chen
arXiv AI
Sep 10

When Does Memory Help? A Cost-Aware Evaluation of Long-Term Memory in Tool-Using LLM Agents

The paper introduces MERIT, a benchmark that evaluates the marginal benefit of long‑term memory for tool‑using large language model agents while explicitly accounting for cost. MERIT provides episodic tool‑use tasks across three domains, verifies dependence on earlier‑episode facts, and measures memory operations in tokens and dollars. Experiments on GPT‑4.1‑mini, Claude Haiku 4.5, and Claude Sonnet 5 show that memory can significantly improve task success, but its utility varies widely across models and memory implementations, and full replay is rarely cost‑effective.

By Shweta Mishra, Shashank Mishra
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 14

CueMem: Cue-Guided Context Reconstruction for Long-Term Conversational Memory

CueMem is a cue‑guided framework for long‑term conversational memory that reconstructs query‑relevant dialogue context from compressed memory records. Instead of treating memory units as self‑contained evidence, it extracts fine‑grained cues linked to their source turns and, at query time, expands from these cues over a turn graph to rebuild a compact evidence context. Experiments on LoCoMo and LongMemEval show that CueMem outperforms baseline memory methods, reduces input tokens and latency, and improves long‑term conversational question answering.

By Changjian Wang, Rongzhen Li, Weili Guan, Shuming Shi, Quan Lu, Ning Jiang