# STAR: Stepwise Task Augmentation with Relation Learning for Aspect Sentiment Quad Prediction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.16093 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.16093/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 37 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Jan 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10683/) (2019)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasoners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11916/) (2022)
- [Sentiment Analysis in the Era of Large Language Models: A Reality Check](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15005/) (2023)
- [Knowing What, How and Why: A Near Complete Solution for Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.01616/) (2019)
- [Make Your LLM Fully Utilize the Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16811/) (2024)
- [Aspect Sentiment Quad Prediction as Paraphrase Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.00796/) (2021)
- [MvP: Multi-view Prompting Improves Aspect Sentiment Tuple Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.12627/) (2023)
- [Improving Aspect Sentiment Quad Prediction via Template-Order Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10291/) (2022)
- [Self-Consistent Reasoning-based Aspect-Sentiment Quad Prediction with Extract-Then-Assign Strategy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.00354/) (2024)
- [Uncertainty-Aware Unlikelihood Learning Improves Generative Aspect Sentiment Quad Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00418/) (2023)
- [RVISA: Reasoning and Verification for Implicit Sentiment Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.02340/) (2024)
- [The Limits of ChatGPT in Extracting Aspect-Category-Opinion-Sentiment Quadruples: A Comparative Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06502/) (2023)
- [BvSP: Broad-view Soft Prompting for Few-Shot Aspect Sentiment Quad Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07365/) (2024)
- [Self-Training with Pseudo-Label Scorer for Aspect Sentiment Quad Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18078/) (2024)

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

- [When LLMs Team Up: The Emergence of Collaborative Affective Computing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01698/) (2025)
- [Generate Then Correct: Single Shot Global Correction for Aspect Sentiment Quad Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13777/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA) aims to identify four sentiment elements, including aspect term, aspect category, opinion term, and sentiment polarity. These elements construct a complete picture of sentiments. The most challenging task, aspect sentiment quad prediction (ASQP), requires predicting all four elements simultaneously and is hindered by the difficulty of accurately modeling dependencies among sentiment elements. A key challenge lies in the scarcity of annotated data, which limits the model ability to understand and reason about the relational dependencies required for effective quad prediction. To address this challenge, we propose a stepwise task augmentation framework with relation learning that decomposes ASQP into a sequence of auxiliary subtasks with increasing relational granularity. Specifically, STAR incrementally constructs auxiliary data by augmenting the training data with pairwise and overall relation tasks, enabling the model to capture and compose sentiment dependencies in a stepwise manner. This stepwise formulation provides effective relational learning signals that enhance quad prediction performance, particularly in low-resource scenarios. Extensive experiments across four benchmark datasets demonstrate that STAR consistently outperforms existing methods, achieving average F1 improvements of over 2% under low-resource conditions.