Neurosymbolic Framework for Concept-Driven Logical Reasoning in Skeleton-Based Human Action Recognition
On the map: LLM reasoning → Spatial and embodied reasoning
Abstract (arXiv)
Skeleton-based human activity recognition has achieved strong empirical performance, yet most existing models remain black boxes and difficult to interpret. In this work, we introduce a neurosymbolic formulation of skeleton-based HAR that reframes action recognition as concept-driven first-order logical reasoning over motion primitives. Our framework bridges representation learning and symbolic inference by grounding first-order logic predicates in learnable spatial and temporal motion concepts. Specifically, we employ a standard spatio-temporal skeleton encoder to extract latent motion representations, which are then mapped to interpretable concept predicates via a spatio-temporal concept decoder that explicitly separates pose-centric and dynamics-centric abstractions. These concept predicates are composed through differentiable first-order logic layers, enabling the model to learn human-readable logical rules that govern action semantics. To impose semantic structure on the learned concepts, we align skeleton representations with LLM-derived descriptions of atomic motion primitives, establishing a shared conceptual space for perception and reasoning. Extensive experiments on NTU RGB+D 60/120 and NW-UCLA demonstrate that our approach achieves competitive recognition performance while providing explicit, interpretable explanations grounded in logical structure. Our results highlight neurosymbolic reasoning as an effective paradigm for interpretable spatio-temporal action understanding. Code: https://github.com/Mr-TalhaIlyas/REASON
Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Spatial and embodied reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 30 of its 42 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 8 May 2026.
Builds on
30 of 42 references.
References · 30
- 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,744
- 2024The Llama 3 Herd of Modelscited by 14,715
- 2013Estimating or Propagating Gradients Through Stochastic Neurons for Conditional Computationcited by 2,079
- 2018Spatial Temporal Graph Convolutional Networks for Skeleton-Based Action Recognitioncited by 1,209
- 2020Concept Bottleneck Modelscited by 1,032
- 2016NTU RGB+D: A Large Scale Dataset for 3D Human Activity Analysiscited by 686
- 2019NTU RGB+D 120: A Large-Scale Benchmark for 3D Human Activity Understandingcited by 533
- 2021Channel-wise Topology Refinement Graph Convolution for Skeleton-Based Action Recognitioncited by 322
- 2021Revisiting Skeleton-based Action Recognitioncited by 257
- 2022MotionBERT: A Unified Perspective on Learning Human Motion Representationscited by 193
- 2014Cross-view Action Modeling, Learning and Recognitioncited by 134
- 2021Promises and Pitfalls of Black-Box Concept Learning Modelscited by 131
18 more
- 2022Hierarchically Decomposed Graph Convolutional Networks for Skeleton-Based Action Recognitioncited by 85
- 2021ML-Decoder: Scalable and Versatile Classification Headcited by 79
- 2023Interpretable Neural-Symbolic Concept Reasoningcited by 57
- 2022Generative Action Description Prompts for Skeleton-based Action Recognitioncited by 43
- 2024LLMs are Good Action Recognizerscited by 37
- 2022SkeletonMAE: Spatial-Temporal Masked Autoencoders for Self-supervised Skeleton Action Recognitioncited by 29
- 2022HAKE: A Knowledge Engine Foundation for Human Activity Understandingcited by 28
- 2024Understanding Video Transformers via Universal Concept Discoverycited by 23
- 2021Best of both worlds: local and global explanations with human-understandable conceptscited by 22
- 2023Learning Interpretable Rules for Scalable Data Representation and Classificationcited by 14
- 2024Hierarchical NeuroSymbolic Approach for Comprehensive and Explainable Action Quality Assessmentcited by 14
- 2024Adaptive Hyper-Graph Convolution Network for Skeleton-based Human Action Recognition with Virtual Connectionscited by 11
- 2023Privacy-preserving Early Detection of Epileptic Seizures in Videoscited by 7
- 2025Enhancing Interpretable Image Classification Through LLM Agents and Conditional Concept Bottleneck Modelscited by 6
- 2025LogicCBMs: Logic-Enhanced Concept-Based Learningcited by 5
- 2025Interpretable Few-Shot Retinal Disease Diagnosis with Concept-Guided Prompting of Vision-Language Modelscited by 4
- 2025WISE: Weak-Supervision-Guided Step-by-Step Explanations for Multimodal LLMs in Image Classificationcited by 4
- 2025SUGAR: Learning Skeleton Representation with Visual-Motion Knowledge for Action Recognitioncited by 3
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.
1 paper.
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2024Neuron: Learning Context-Aware Evolving Representations for Zero-Shot Skeleton Action Recognition
- 2025SkeletonAgent: An Agentic Interaction Framework for Skeleton-based Action Recognition
- 2024Vision-Language Meets the Skeleton: Progressively Distillation with Cross-Modal Knowledge for 3D Action Representation Learning
- 2025PCBEAR: Pose Concept Bottleneck for Explainable Action Recognition
- 2023Elevating Skeleton-Based Action Recognition with Efficient Multi-Modality Self-Supervision
- 2026T-MOR: Learning Motion-Aware Skeleton Representations for Human Action Recognition
- 2026LLM Enhanced Action Recognition via Hierarchical Global-Local Skeleton-Language Model
- 2025Boosting Skeleton-based Zero-Shot Action Recognition with Training-Free Test-Time Adaptation