arXiv Computation and Language By Tzu-Quan Lin, Wei-Ping Huang, Yi-Cheng Lin, Hung-yi Lee

How Contrastive Decoding Enhances Large Audio Language Models

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The paper evaluates four Contrastive Decoding (CD) strategies for Large Audio Language Models (LALMs) and finds that Audio-Aware Decoding and Audio Contrastive Decoding are the most effective. Their performance varies across models, largely depending on the baseline error profile: CD reliably fixes errors where models incorrectly claim no audio or rely on uncertainty-driven guessing, but struggles with flawed reasoning or confident misassertions. A token-level analysis shows that CD’s suppression targets hesitation markers, explaining its limited impact on confident errors.

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