# Leveraging Inter-Chunk Interactions for Enhanced Retrieval in Large Language Model-Based Question Answering

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.02907 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.02907/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 35 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Aug 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06180/) (2023)
- [SQuAD: 100,000+ Questions for Machine Comprehension of Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.05250/) (2016)
- [HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.09600/) (2018)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10997/) (2023)
- [Survey of Hallucination in Natural Language Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03629/) (2022)
- [Constructing A Multi-hop QA Dataset for Comprehensive Evaluation of Reasoning Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.01060/) (2020)
- [Interleaving Retrieval with Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Knowledge-Intensive Multi-Step Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10509/) (2022)
- [MuSiQue: Multihop Questions via Single-hop Question Composition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.00573/) (2021)
- [SelfCheckGPT: Zero-Resource Black-Box Hallucination Detection for Generative Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08896/) (2023)
- [REPLUG: Retrieval-Augmented Black-Box Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12652/) (2023)
- [Decomposed Prompting: A Modular Approach for Solving Complex Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02406/) (2022)
- [RAPTOR: Recursive Abstractive Processing for Tree-Organized Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.18059/) (2024)
- [Adaptive-RAG: Learning to Adapt Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models through Question Complexity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14403/) (2024)
- [Enhancing Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models with Iterative Retrieval-Generation Synergy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15294/) (2023)
- [Reasoning on Graphs: Faithful and Interpretable Large Language Model Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01061/) (2023)
- [HippoRAG: Neurobiologically Inspired Long-Term Memory for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14831/) (2024)
- [LLaVAR: Enhanced Visual Instruction Tuning for Text-Rich Image Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.17107/) (2023)
- [Does Localization Inform Editing? Surprising Differences in Causality-Based Localization vs. Knowledge Editing in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.04213/) (2023)
- [Query Rewriting for Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14283/) (2023)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.19736/) (2023)
- [Answering Complex Open-Domain Questions with Multi-Hop Dense Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.12756/) (2020)
- [A Survey on Retrieval-Augmented Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.01110/) (2022)
- [Knowledge Graph Prompting for Multi-Document Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11730/) (2023)
- [TableLlama: Towards Open Large Generalist Models for Tables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09206/) (2023)
- [End-to-End Training of Multi-Document Reader and Retriever for Open-Domain Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05346/) (2021)
- [Large Language Models for Generative Recommendation: A Survey and Visionary Discussions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01157/) (2023)
- [IIRC: A Dataset of Incomplete Information Reading Comprehension Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.07127/) (2020)
- [Peek Across: Improving Multi-Document Modeling via Cross-Document Question-Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15387/) (2023)
- [HyKGE: A Hypothesis Knowledge Graph Enhanced Framework for Accurate and Reliable Medical LLMs Responses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15883/) (2023)
- [Exploring the Impact of Table-to-Text Methods on Augmenting LLM-based Question Answering with Domain Hybrid Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.12869/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Towards LifeSpan Cognitive Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.13265/) (2024)
- [Benefits and Limitations of Communication in Multi-Agent Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.13903/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Retrieving external knowledge and prompting large language models with relevant information is an effective paradigm to enhance the performance of question-answering tasks. Previous research typically handles paragraphs from external documents in isolation, resulting in a lack of context and ambiguous references, particularly in multi-document and complex tasks. To overcome these challenges, we propose a new retrieval framework IIER, that leverages Inter-chunk Interactions to Enhance Retrieval. This framework captures the internal connections between document chunks by considering three types of interactions: structural, keyword, and semantic. We then construct a unified Chunk-Interaction Graph to represent all external documents comprehensively. Additionally, we design a graph-based evidence chain retriever that utilizes previous paths and chunk interactions to guide the retrieval process. It identifies multiple seed nodes based on the target question and iteratively searches for relevant chunks to gather supporting evidence. This retrieval process refines the context and reasoning chain, aiding the large language model in reasoning and answer generation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that IIER outperforms strong baselines across four datasets, highlighting its effectiveness in improving retrieval and reasoning capabilities.