arXiv AI By Shruthi Gowda, Nikita Jain, Elahe Arani, Bahram Zonooz

Language Guidance for Supervised Vision Training: An Empirical Study of Generalization

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The paper investigates whether pretrained language models can act as lightweight auxiliary supervision for supervised vision training, without requiring paired image-text data or complex objectives. Two forms of language guidance—Explicit Language Guidance (ExLG) and Implicit Language Guidance (ImLG)—are evaluated across six generalization regimes, including in‑distribution, out‑of‑distribution, shortcut resistance, texture/shape bias, adversarial robustness, and continual learning. Results show that ExLG improves in‑distribution, low‑data performance, and continual learning retention, while ImLG is more effective in shortcut‑sensitive and adversarial settings, and both add minimal parameters and training overhead.

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