Meta Learning for Natural Language Processing: A Survey
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Abstract (arXiv)
Deep learning has been the mainstream technique in natural language processing (NLP) area. However, the techniques require many labeled data and are less generalizable across domains. Meta-learning is an arising field in machine learning studying approaches to learn better learning algorithms. Approaches aim at improving algorithms in various aspects, including data efficiency and generalizability. Efficacy of approaches has been shown in many NLP tasks, but there is no systematic survey of these approaches in NLP, which hinders more researchers from joining the field. Our goal with this survey paper is to offer researchers pointers to relevant meta-learning works in NLP and attract more attention from the NLP community to drive future innovation. This paper first introduces the general concepts of meta-learning and the common approaches. Then we summarize task construction settings and application of meta-learning for various NLP problems and review the development of meta-learning in NLP community.
Key facts. Cited by 26 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 125 of its 164 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 May 2022.
Builds on
125 of 164 references.
References · 125
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38 more
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- 2018Meta-Learning for Low-Resource Neural Machine Translationcited by 105
- 2020A Survey of Deep Meta-Learningcited by 99
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50 most cited of 125 All 125 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2022: 3; 2023: 10; 2024: 6; 2025: 4; 2026: 3.
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- 2024Adaptive Guidance for Local Training in Heterogeneous Federated Learningcited by 0
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- 2025Agentic Meta-Orchestrator for Multi-task Copilotscited by 0
- 2026Meta-Learning and Meta-Reinforcement Learning -- Tracing the Path towards DeepMind's Adaptive Agentcited by 0
- 2026Structural priors for data-efficient language learning10 Sep 2026
- 2026STRUCTSURVEY: Structured Agentic Retrieval for Automated Survey Paper Generation12 May 2026
- 2026Meta-Learning and Meta-Reinforcement Learning -- Tracing the Path towards DeepMind's Adaptive Agent23 Feb 2026
- 2025XDoGE: Multilingual Data Reweighting to Enhance Language Inclusivity in LLMs11 Dec 2025
- 2025Agentic Meta-Orchestrator for Multi-task Copilots26 Oct 2025
- 2025Latent Representation Learning of Multi-scale Thermophysics: Application to Dynamics in Shocked Porous Energetic Material15 Jun 2025
- 2025Meta-Thinking in LLMs via Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning: A Survey20 Apr 2025
- 2024Adaptive Guidance for Local Training in Heterogeneous Federated Learning9 Oct 2024
- 2024MetaFollower: Adaptable Personalized Autonomous Car Following23 Jun 2024
- 2024Towards Robust Physical-world Backdoor Attacks on Lane Detection9 May 2024
- 2024Towards Incremental Learning in Large Language Models: A Critical Review28 Apr 2024
- 2024CoLLEGe: Concept Embedding Generation for Large Language Models22 Mar 2024
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- 2024Multi-scale Traffic Pattern Bank for Cross-city Few-shot Traffic Forecasting1 Feb 2024
- 2023A Survey on Stability of Learning with Limited Labelled Data and its Sensitivity to the Effects of Randomness2 Dec 2023
- 2023BERT Goes Off-Topic: Investigating the Domain Transfer Challenge using Genre Classification27 Nov 2023
- 2023MathNAS: If Blocks Have a Role in Mathematical Architecture Design8 Nov 2023
- 2023Hyperbolic Graph Neural Networks at Scale: A Meta Learning Approach29 Oct 2023
- 2023Multilingual Sentence-Level Semantic Search using Meta-Distillation Learning15 Sep 2023
- 2023Cross-city Few-Shot Traffic Forecasting via Traffic Pattern Bank17 Aug 2023
- 2023Harnessing the Power of LLMs in Practice: A Survey on ChatGPT and Beyond26 Apr 2023
- 2023AugGPT: Leveraging ChatGPT for Text Data Augmentation25 Feb 2023
- 2023Mask-guided BERT for Few Shot Text Classification21 Feb 2023
- 2023Learning to Initialize: Can Meta Learning Improve Cross-task Generalization in Prompt Tuning?16 Feb 2023
- 2022Federated Learning and Meta Learning: Approaches, Applications, and Directions24 Oct 2022
- 2022m4Adapter: Multilingual Multi-Domain Adaptation for Machine Translation with a Meta-Adapter21 Oct 2022
- 2022The Devil is in the Details: On Models and Training Regimes for Few-Shot Intent Classification12 Oct 2022
- 2023Harnessing the Power of LLMs in Practice: A Survey on ChatGPT and Beyondcited by 409
- 2023AugGPT: Leveraging ChatGPT for Text Data Augmentationcited by 128
- 2023Mask-guided BERT for Few Shot Text Classificationcited by 25
- 2024Towards Robust Physical-world Backdoor Attacks on Lane Detectioncited by 25
- 2023Cross-city Few-Shot Traffic Forecasting via Traffic Pattern Bankcited by 22
- 2023A Survey on Stability of Learning with Limited Labelled Data and its Sensitivity to the Effects of Randomnesscited by 14
- 2022Federated Learning and Meta Learning: Approaches, Applications, and Directionscited by 12
- 2023Learning to Initialize: Can Meta Learning Improve Cross-task Generalization in Prompt Tuning?cited by 11
- 2024Multi-scale Traffic Pattern Bank for Cross-city Few-shot Traffic Forecastingcited by 7
- 2024Towards Incremental Learning in Large Language Models: A Critical Reviewcited by 6
- 2023Hyperbolic Graph Neural Networks at Scale: A Meta Learning Approachcited by 5
- 2023MathNAS: If Blocks Have a Role in Mathematical Architecture Designcited by 4
12 most cited of 23 All 23 (JSON)
- 2026Structural priors for data-efficient language learning10 Sep 2026
- 2026Meta-Learning and Meta-Reinforcement Learning -- Tracing the Path towards DeepMind's Adaptive Agent23 Feb 2026
- 2025XDoGE: Multilingual Data Reweighting to Enhance Language Inclusivity in LLMs11 Dec 2025
- 2025Latent Representation Learning of Multi-scale Thermophysics: Application to Dynamics in Shocked Porous Energetic Material15 Jun 2025
- 2024Adaptive Guidance for Local Training in Heterogeneous Federated Learning9 Oct 2024
- 2024MetaFollower: Adaptable Personalized Autonomous Car Following23 Jun 2024
- 2024Towards Robust Physical-world Backdoor Attacks on Lane Detection9 May 2024
- 2024Towards Incremental Learning in Large Language Models: A Critical Review28 Apr 2024
- 2024CoLLEGe: Concept Embedding Generation for Large Language Models22 Mar 2024
- 2024Multi-scale Traffic Pattern Bank for Cross-city Few-shot Traffic Forecasting1 Feb 2024
- 2023A Survey on Stability of Learning with Limited Labelled Data and its Sensitivity to the Effects of Randomness2 Dec 2023
- 2023BERT Goes Off-Topic: Investigating the Domain Transfer Challenge using Genre Classification27 Nov 2023
12 newest of 23 All 23 (JSON)