# Make Domain Shift a Catastrophic Forgetting Alleviator in Class-Incremental Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.00237 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00237/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 31 Dec 2024.

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Universal Incremental Learning: Mitigating Confusion from Inter- and Intra-task Distribution Randomness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07035/) (2025)
- [Optimisation Is Not What You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.03045/) (2025)
- [iDocV2: Leveraging Self-Supervision and Open-Set Detection for Improving Pattern Spotting in Historical Documents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16726/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In the realm of class-incremental learning (CIL), alleviating the catastrophic forgetting problem is a pivotal challenge. This paper discovers a counter-intuitive observation: by incorporating domain shift into CIL tasks, the forgetting rate is significantly reduced. Our comprehensive studies demonstrate that incorporating domain shift leads to a clearer separation in the feature distribution across tasks and helps reduce parameter interference during the learning process. Inspired by this observation, we propose a simple yet effective method named DisCo to deal with CIL tasks. DisCo introduces a lightweight prototype pool that utilizes contrastive learning to promote distinct feature distributions for the current task relative to previous ones, effectively mitigating interference across tasks. DisCo can be easily integrated into existing state-of-the-art class-incremental learning methods. Experimental results show that incorporating our method into various CIL methods achieves substantial performance improvements, validating the benefits of our approach in enhancing class-incremental learning by separating feature representation and reducing interference. These findings illustrate that DisCo can serve as a robust fashion for future research in class-incremental learning.