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Temporal Reasoning on Implicit Events from Distant Supervision

arXiv 2010.12753 ↗First posted 24 Oct 2020cs.CLcited by 58

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Abstract (arXiv)

We propose TRACIE, a novel temporal reasoning dataset that evaluates the degree to which systems understand implicit events -- events that are not mentioned explicitly in natural language text but can be inferred from it. This introduces a new challenge in temporal reasoning research, where prior work has focused on explicitly mentioned events. Human readers can infer implicit events via commonsense reasoning, resulting in a more comprehensive understanding of the situation and, consequently, better reasoning about time. We find, however, that state-of-the-art models struggle when predicting temporal relationships between implicit and explicit events. To address this, we propose a neuro-symbolic temporal reasoning model, SYMTIME, which exploits distant supervision signals from large-scale text and uses temporal rules to combine start times and durations to infer end times. SYMTIME outperforms strong baseline systems on TRACIE by 5%, and by 11% in a zero prior knowledge training setting. Our approach also generalizes to other temporal reasoning tasks, as evidenced by a gain of 1%-9% on MATRES, an explicit event benchmark.

Key facts. Cited by 58 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 24 Oct 2020.

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Citing papers per year: 2021: 5; 2022: 15; 2023: 14; 2024: 12; 2025: 10; 2026: 2.

58 papers.

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  1. 2021Time-Aware Language Models as Temporal Knowledge Basescited by 296
  2. 2023Large-scale Multi-Modal Pre-trained Models: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 153
  3. 2021SituatedQA: Incorporating Extra-Linguistic Contexts into QAcited by 145
  4. 2024Large Language Models Can Learn Temporal Reasoningcited by 111
  5. 2022State-of-the-art generalisation research in NLP: A taxonomy and reviewcited by 98
  6. 2024Stable LM 2 1.6B Technical Reportcited by 90
  7. 2024Test of Time: A Benchmark for Evaluating LLMs on Temporal Reasoningcited by 88
  8. 2021Think you have Solved Direct-Answer Question Answering? Try ARC-DA, the Direct-Answer AI2 Reasoning Challengecited by 80
  9. 2024A Peek into Token Bias: Large Language Models Are Not Yet Genuine Reasonerscited by 73
  10. 2023Test of Time: Instilling Video-Language Models with a Sense of Timecited by 51
  11. 2023Language Models Can Improve Event Prediction by Few-Shot Abductive Reasoningcited by 45
  12. 2023Benchmarks for Automated Commonsense Reasoning: A Surveycited by 40
38 more
  1. 2022Is Neuro-Symbolic AI Meeting its Promise in Natural Language Processing? A Structured Reviewcited by 38
  2. 2022A Survey of Knowledge-Intensive NLP with Pre-Trained Language Modelscited by 30
  3. 2025Time-R1: Towards Comprehensive Temporal Reasoning in LLMscited by 25
  4. 2022DQ-BART: Efficient Sequence-to-Sequence Model via Joint Distillation and Quantizationcited by 23
  5. 2024TimeArena: Shaping Efficient Multitasking Language Agents in a Time-Aware Simulationcited by 23
  6. 2021VidLanKD: Improving Language Understanding via Video-Distilled Knowledge Transfercited by 22
  7. 2022There is a Time and Place for Reasoning Beyond the Imagecited by 22
  8. 2023COLA: Contextualized Commonsense Causal Reasoning from the Causal Inference Perspectivecited by 22
  9. 2023Open-Domain Hierarchical Event Schema Induction by Incremental Prompting and Verificationcited by 19
  10. 2022Learning to Decompose: Hypothetical Question Decomposition Based on Comparable Textscited by 18
  11. 2022Generic Temporal Reasoning with Differential Analysis and Explanationcited by 18
  12. 2024BIRD: A Trustworthy Bayesian Inference Framework for Large Language Modelscited by 18
  13. 2025ChronoSense: Exploring Temporal Understanding in Large Language Models with Time Intervals of Eventscited by 18
  14. 2024UnSeenTimeQA: Time-Sensitive Question-Answering Beyond LLMs' Memorizationcited by 17
  15. 2021Salience-Aware Event Chain Modeling for Narrative Understandingcited by 15
  16. 2022Extracting or Guessing? Improving Faithfulness of Event Temporal Relation Extractioncited by 15
  17. 2025It's High Time: A Survey of Temporal Question Answeringcited by 14
  18. 2023Getting Sick After Seeing a Doctor? Diagnosing and Mitigating Knowledge Conflicts in Event Temporal Reasoningcited by 13
  19. 2023An Overview Of Temporal Commonsense Reasoning and Acquisitioncited by 10
  20. 2024Assessing Episodic Memory in LLMs with Sequence Order Recall Taskscited by 10
  21. 2025LexTime: A Benchmark for Temporal Ordering of Legal Eventscited by 10
  22. 2022Zero-Shot On-the-Fly Event Schema Inductioncited by 9
  23. 2022Synopses of Movie Narratives: a Video-Language Dataset for Story Understandingcited by 8
  24. 2023EvEval: A Comprehensive Evaluation of Event Semantics for Large Language Modelscited by 6
  25. 2025Unlocking the Potential of Generative AI through Neuro-Symbolic Architectures: Benefits and Limitationscited by 6
  26. 2024Towards Effective Time-Aware Language Representation: Exploring Enhanced Temporal Understanding in Language Modelscited by 5
  27. 2025Counterfactual-Consistency Prompting for Relative Temporal Understanding in Large Language Modelscited by 5
  28. 2022Learning Action Conditions from Instructional Manuals for Instruction Understandingcited by 4
  29. 2022A Closer Look at Temporal Ordering in the Segmentation of Instructional Videoscited by 4
  30. 2023NLP Reproducibility For All: Understanding Experiences of Beginnerscited by 4
  31. 2024Unveiling Divergent Inductive Biases of LLMs on Temporal Datacited by 4
  32. 2024A Comprehensive Evaluation on Event Reasoning of Large Language Modelscited by 4
  33. 2022Some Reflections on Drawing Causal Inference using Textual Data: Parallels Between Human Subjects and Organized Textscited by 2
  34. 2022What Has Been Enhanced in my Knowledge-Enhanced Language Model?cited by 2
  35. 2023Large Language Models as Sous Chefs: Revising Recipes with GPT-3cited by 2
  36. 2023Choice-75: A Dataset on Decision Branching in Script Learningcited by 2
  37. 2023From Heuristic to Analytic: Cognitively Motivated Strategies for Coherent Physical Commonsense Reasoningcited by 2
  38. 2024Temporal Validity Change Predictioncited by 2

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