Papers by Mian Zhang
Friend-training: Learning from Models of Different but Related Tasks (2023.eacl-main)
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| Challenge: | Current self-training methods focus on improving model performance on a single task. |
| Approach: | They propose a cross-task self-training framework where models trained to do different tasks are used in iterative training, pseudo-labeling, and retraining processes to help each other for better selection of pseudo-labeled labels. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework achieves the best performance compared to baselines on two dialogue understanding tasks. |
Inconsistent dialogue responses and how to recover from them (2024.findings-eacl)
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| Challenge: | Existing methods to assess and bolster utterance consistency of chat systems have been shown difficult to detect. |
| Approach: | They propose to use annotators to write dialogue responses and recovery utterances to assess and bolster utteration consistency of chat systems. |
| Outcome: | The proposed dataset significantly improves the detection and resolution of inconsistencies in chat conversations. |
Preference Learning Unlocks LLMs’ Psycho-Counseling Skills (2026.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Current LLMs struggle to consistently provide effective responses to client speeches due to the lack of supervision from high-quality real psycho-counseling data. |
| Approach: | They propose to use a dataset to evaluate therapists' responses to client speeches using a set of professional and comprehensive principles to evaluate their responses. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model achieves an impressive win rate of 87% against GPT-4o. |
CBT-Bench: Evaluating Large Language Models on Assisting Cognitive Behavior Therapy (2025.naacl-long)
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Mian Zhang, Xianjun Yang, Xinlu Zhang, Travis Labrum, Jamie C. Chiu, Shaun M. Eack, Fei Fang, William Yang Wang, Zhiyu Chen
| Challenge: | Existing research has explored mental health condition classifications, empathetic conversations, and chatbots designed for simple discourse structures. |
| Approach: | They propose a benchmark for systematic evaluation of cognitive behavioral therapy assistance using Large Language Models (LLMs). |
| Outcome: | The proposed benchmark includes three levels of tasks covering key aspects of cognitive behavioral therapy that could be enhanced through AI assistance. |
Towards Automatic Bias Detection in Knowledge Graphs (2021.findings-emnlp)
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| Challenge: | Recent studies have shown that knowledge graphs are prone to various social biases, and have proposed multiple methods for debiasing them. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework for identifying biases present in knowledge graph embeddings based on numerical bias metrics. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework can be extended to further bias definitions and applications. |
Is Grokking Worthwhile? Functional Analysis and Transferability of Generalization Circuits in Transformers (2026.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Large Language Models struggle with the "curse of two-hop reasoning" in compositional tasks. |
| Approach: | They propose to form a "Generalization Circuit" during a prolonged "grokking" phase . they argue that grokkking is the process of integrating memorized atomic facts into an easy-acquire reasoning path. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model is superior to non-grokked models, but it requires a large computational cost . the study shows that grokking is not the sudden acquisition of a new reasoning paradigm . |
SafeConv: Explaining and Correcting Conversational Unsafe Behavior (2023.acl-long)
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| Challenge: | Existing datasets do not provide enough annotation to explain unsafe behavior . current chatbots generate toxic and offensive responses, which can be dangerous . |
| Approach: | They construct a dataset called SafeConv that provides comprehensive annotations for chatbots . they compare safe alternatives to rewrite unsafe responses . |
| Outcome: | The proposed model can explain unsafe behavior and detoxify chatbots, the authors show . the proposed model is able to detect unsafe utterances, extract unsafe spans, and convert unsafe responses to safe versions. |
LMR-BENCH: Evaluating LLM Agent’s Ability on Reproducing Language Modeling Research (2025.emnlp-main)
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Shuo Yan, Ruochen Li, Ziming Luo, Zimu Wang, Daoyang Li, Liqiang Jing, Kaiyu He, Peilin Wu, Juntong Ni, George Michalopoulos, Yue Zhang, Ziyang Zhang, Mian Zhang, Zhiyu Chen, Xinya Du
| Challenge: | Large language model (LLM) agents have demonstrated remarkable potential in advancing scientific discovery, but their capability in reproducing code from research papers remains underexplored. |
| Approach: | They propose to evaluate LLM agents' ability to reproduce scientific research papers by analyzing code reproduction tasks from 23 research papers published in top-tier NLP venues. |
| Outcome: | The proposed benchmark systematically evaluates the capability of large language model (LLM) agents on code reproduction from Language Modeling Research. |
IDEA: Enhancing the Rule Learning Ability of Large Language Model Agent through Induction, Deduction, and Abduction (2025.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | RULEARN is a benchmark to assess the rule-learning abilities of large language models (LLMs) in interactive environments. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that integrates the process of **I**nduction, **De**duction, and **A**bduction. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework improves on the baseline and human-like rule learning in real-world scenarios. |
Search Wisely: Mitigating Sub-optimal Agentic Searches By Reducing Uncertainty (2025.emnlp-main)
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| Challenge: | Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) have propelled their use in informationintensive tasks such as question answering and knowledge synthesis. |
| Approach: | They propose a reinforcement learning-based training method that incorporates confidence thresholds to reward high-certainty search decisions. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method outperforms baseline models on seven QA benchmarks and demonstrates that it is more efficient than existing methods. |