# Attentional Encoder Network for Targeted Sentiment Classification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.09314 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.09314/

## Key facts

- Cited by 48 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 25 Feb 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 48)

- [A Survey of Human-in-the-loop for Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.00941/) (2021)
- [A Survey on Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis: Tasks, Methods, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01054/) (2022)
- [How Robust is GPT-3.5 to Predecessors? A Comprehensive Study on Language Understanding Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.00293/) (2023)
- [Attention, please! A survey of Neural Attention Models in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16775/) (2021)
- [Learning Implicit Sentiment in Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis with Supervised Contrastive Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.02194/) (2021)
- [Attention layers provably solve single-location regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.01537/) (2024)
- [Graph Ensemble Learning over Multiple Dependency Trees for Aspect-level Sentiment Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11794/) (2021)
- [A Contrastive Cross-Channel Data Augmentation Framework for Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.07832/) (2022)
- [METS-CoV: A Dataset of Medical Entity and Targeted Sentiment on COVID-19 Related Tweets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.13773/) (2022)
- [Understand me, if you refer to Aspect Knowledge: Knowledge-aware Gated Recurrent Memory Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.02352/) (2021)
- [BiSyn-GAT+: Bi-Syntax Aware Graph Attention Network for Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03117/) (2022)
- [Incorporating Dynamic Semantics into Pre-Trained Language Model for Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.16369/) (2022)
- [Out of Context: A New Clue for Context Modeling of Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10816/) (2021)
- [DigNet: Digging Clues from Local-Global Interactive Graph for Aspect-level Sentiment Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.00989/) (2022)
- [Reproducibility, Replicability and Beyond: Assessing Production Readiness of Aspect Based Sentiment Analysis in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.09449/) (2021)
- [BERT4GCN: Using BERT Intermediate Layers to Augment GCN for Aspect-based Sentiment Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.00171/) (2021)
- [Towards Unifying the Label Space for Aspect- and Sentence-based Sentiment Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.07090/) (2022)
- [Iterative Data Generation with Large Language Models for Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.00341/) (2024)
- [Enhanced Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis Models with Progressive Self-supervised Attention Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03446/) (2021)
- [Neural Subgraph Explorer: Reducing Noisy Information via Target-Oriented Syntax Graph Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10970/) (2022)
- [Enhancing Event-Level Sentiment Analysis with Structured Arguments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15511/) (2022)
- [Please, Don't Forget the Difference and the Confidence Interval when Seeking for the State-of-the-Art Status](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11134/) (2022)
- [A Novel Counterfactual Data Augmentation Method for Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11260/) (2023)
- [Enhancing Long-Range Dependency with State Space Model and Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks for Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.10347/) (2024)
- [Re-Evaluating GermEval17 Using German Pre-Trained Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12330/) (2021)
- [Computational Sarcasm Analysis on Social Media: A Systematic Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.06170/) (2022)
- [Tell Model Where to Attend: Improving Interpretability of Aspect-Based Sentiment Classification via Small Explanation Annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.10479/) (2023)
- [Aspect-oriented Opinion Alignment Network for Aspect-Based Sentiment Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11447/) (2023)
- [Instruct-DeBERTa: A Hybrid Approach for Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis on Textual Reviews](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.13202/) (2024)
- [Arabic aspect sentiment polarity classification using BERT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.13290/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Targeted sentiment classification aims at determining the sentimental tendency towards specific targets. Most of the previous approaches model context and target words with RNN and attention. However, RNNs are difficult to parallelize and truncated backpropagation through time brings difficulty in remembering long-term patterns. To address this issue, this paper proposes an Attentional Encoder Network (AEN) which eschews recurrence and employs attention based encoders for the modeling between context and target. We raise the label unreliability issue and introduce label smoothing regularization. We also apply pre-trained BERT to this task and obtain new state-of-the-art results. Experiments and analysis demonstrate the effectiveness and lightweight of our model.