When the Preconditioning Exponent Turns Negative: Learning-Rate Coupling and Cross-Environment Generalization

Adaptive optimizers are commonly parameterized by a fixed power of the second-moment estimate. Existing partially adaptive methods study exponents between momentum-like updates and the standard Adam square root, while the interaction between this exponent and the global learning rate is less understood. We perform a controlled cross-environment study using a paired four-environment classification problem with stable sparse features, environment-dependent spurious sparse features, dense features, and high-dimensional noise. Across NumRuns source-training runs covering 21 preconditioning exponents p∈[-0.5,0.5] and five learning rates η∈[10-4,10-2], we find that the exponent maximizing cross-environment accuracy decreases almost linearly with log10η. The fitted slopes range from -0.270 to -0.300, with R2 between 0.972 and 0.996. At η=10-2, source-validation selection still prefers positive exponents in all four environments, whereas cross-environment and worst-environment criteria prefer negative exponents. Checkpoint decomposition shows that lower p reduces the learned spurious-to-stable and noise-to-stable weight ratios; under reversed correlation, it also reduces the magnitude of the harmful spurious margin. Negative p is therefore not a universally optimal setting. It is a high-step-size allocation regime produced by the joint action of learning rate and preconditioning. The study also exposes a model-selection conflict: source-domain validation systematically selects a different preconditioning regime from the one that maximizes robustness to environmental change. The results are a single-seed, finite-budget mechanism study rather than a broad benchmark claim.