# CDF-RAG: Causal Dynamic Feedback for Adaptive Retrieval-Augmented Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.12560 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12560/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Knowledge-graph and structured-knowledge RAG, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation.
- Builds on 19 of its 32 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Apr 2025.

## Placed in

- Retrieval-augmented generation / [Knowledge-graph and structured-knowledge RAG](https://mlsanity.com/rag/knowledge-graph-and-structured-knowledge-rag/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [Dense Passage Retrieval for Open-Domain Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04906/) (2020)
- [HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.09600/) (2018)
- [MiniLM: Deep Self-Attention Distillation for Task-Agnostic Compression of Pre-Trained Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10957/) (2020)
- [What Disease does this Patient Have? A Large-scale Open Domain Question Answering Dataset from Medical Exams](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.13081/) (2020)
- [Cosmos QA: Machine Reading Comprehension with Contextual Commonsense Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.00277/) (2019)
- [RQ-RAG: Learning to Refine Queries for Retrieval Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00610/) (2024)
- [Can Large Language Models Infer Causation from Correlation?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05836/) (2023)
- [Beat the AI: Investigating Adversarial Human Annotation for Reading Comprehension](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.00293/) (2020)
- [Long-Context LLMs Meet RAG: Overcoming Challenges for Long Inputs in RAG](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05983/) (2024)
- [Do I Know This Entity? Knowledge Awareness and Hallucinations in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14257/) (2024)
- [InstructRAG: Instructing Retrieval-Augmented Generation via Self-Synthesized Rationales](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.13629/) (2024)
- [ReDeEP: Detecting Hallucination in Retrieval-Augmented Generation via Mechanistic Interpretability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.11414/) (2024)
- [Reasoning-Enhanced Healthcare Predictions with Knowledge Graph Community Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04585/) (2024)
- [Supervising the search process produces reliable and generalizable information-seeking agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13957/) (2025)
- [Causal Graphs Meet Thoughts: Enhancing Complex Reasoning in Graph-Augmented LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.14892/) (2025)
- [UniCausal: Unified Benchmark and Repository for Causal Text Mining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.09163/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [SymRAG: Efficient Neuro-Symbolic Retrieval Through Adaptive Query Routing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.12981/) (2025)
- [MedCoT-RAG: Causal Chain-of-Thought RAG for Medical Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15849/) (2025)
- [CARE-ECG: Causal Agent-based Reasoning for Explainable and Counterfactual ECG Interpretation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10420/) (2026)
- [Causal-Enhanced AI Agents for Medical Research Screening](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.02814/) (2026)
- [PerCaM-Health: Personalized Dynamic Causal Graphs for Healthcare Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.07267/) (2026)
- [Mapping the RAG Landscape: A Four Axis Taxonomy of Efficiency, Defense, Interactivity, and Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.01936/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has significantly enhanced large language models (LLMs) in knowledge-intensive tasks by incorporating external knowledge retrieval. However, existing RAG frameworks primarily rely on semantic similarity and correlation-driven retrieval, limiting their ability to distinguish true causal relationships from spurious associations. This results in responses that may be factually grounded but fail to establish cause-and-effect mechanisms, leading to incomplete or misleading insights. To address this issue, we introduce Causal Dynamic Feedback for Adaptive Retrieval-Augmented Generation (CDF-RAG), a framework designed to improve causal consistency, factual accuracy, and explainability in generative reasoning. CDF-RAG iteratively refines queries, retrieves structured causal graphs, and enables multi-hop causal reasoning across interconnected knowledge sources. Additionally, it validates responses against causal pathways, ensuring logically coherent and factually grounded outputs. We evaluate CDF-RAG on four diverse datasets, demonstrating its ability to improve response accuracy and causal correctness over existing RAG-based methods. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/ elakhatibi/CDF-RAG.