2025 · conference
From Ambiguity to Accuracy: The Transformative Effect of Coreference Resolution on Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems
Youngjoon Jang*, Seongtae Hong*, Junyoung Son, Sungjin Park, Chanjun Park, Heuiseok Lim†
Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 4: Student Research Workshop)
Abstract
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has emerged as a crucial framework in natural language processing (NLP), improving factual consistency and reducing hallucinations by integrating external document retrieval with large language models (LLMs). However, the effectiveness of RAG is often hindered by coreferential complexity in retrieved documents, which can introduce ambiguity and interfere with in-context learning. In this study, we systematically investigate how entity coreference affects both document retrieval and generative performance in RAG-based systems, focusing on retrieval relevance, contextual understanding, and overall response quality. We demonstrate that coreference resolution enhances retrieval effectiveness and improves question-answering (QA) performance. Through comparative analysis of different pooling strategies in retrieval tasks, we find that mean pooling demonstrates superior context capturing ability after applying coreference resolution. In QA tasks, we discover that smaller models show greater improvement from the disambiguation process, likely due to their limited inherent capacity for handling referential ambiguity. With these findings, this study aims to provide a deeper understanding of the challenges posed by coreferential complexity in RAG, offering guidance for improving retrieval and generation in knowledge-intensive AI applications.
Motivation
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Notes
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@inproceedings{2025-ambiguity-accuracy-transformative-effect-coreference-resolution,
title = {From Ambiguity to Accuracy: The Transformative Effect of Coreference Resolution on Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems},
author = {Youngjoon Jang and Seongtae Hong and Junyoung Son and Sungjin Park and Chanjun Park and Heuiseok Lim},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 4: Student Research Workshop)},
year = {2025},
month = {7},
pages = {422-433},
abstract = {Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has emerged as a crucial framework in natural language processing (NLP), improving factual consistency and reducing hallucinations by integrating external document retrieval with large language models (LLMs). However, the effectiveness of RAG is often hindered by coreferential complexity in retrieved documents, which can introduce ambiguity and interfere with in-context learning. In this study, we systematically investigate how entity coreference affects both document retrieval and generative performance in RAG-based systems, focusing on retrieval relevance, contextual understanding, and overall response quality. We demonstrate that coreference resolution enhances retrieval effectiveness and improves question-answering (QA) performance. Through comparative analysis of different pooling strategies in retrieval tasks, we find that mean pooling demonstrates superior context capturing ability after applying coreference resolution. In QA tasks, we discover that smaller models show greater improvement from the disambiguation process, likely due to their limited inherent capacity for handling referential ambiguity. With these findings, this study aims to provide a deeper understanding of the challenges posed by coreferential complexity in RAG, offering guidance for improving retrieval and generation in knowledge-intensive AI applications.},
url = {https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-srw.27/}
}