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In-context Learning with Retrieved Demonstrations for Language Models: A Survey

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arxiv 2401.11624 v5 pith:23GZ3SQD submitted 2024-01-21 cs.CL cs.AIcs.IR

classification cs.CLcs.AIcs.IR
keywords demonstrationsmodelsretrievallanguagefew-shotin-contextinputlearning
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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Language models, especially pre-trained large language models, have showcased remarkable abilities as few-shot in-context learners (ICL), adept at adapting to new tasks with just a few demonstrations in the input context. However, the model's ability to perform ICL is sensitive to the choice of the few-shot demonstrations. Instead of using a fixed set of demonstrations, one recent development is to retrieve demonstrations tailored to each input query. The implementation of demonstration retrieval is relatively straightforward, leveraging existing databases and retrieval systems. This not only improves the efficiency and scalability of the learning process but also has been shown to reduce biases inherent in manual example selection. In light of the encouraging results and growing research in ICL with retrieved demonstrations, we conduct an extensive review of studies in this area. In this survey, we discuss and compare different design choices for retrieval models, retrieval training procedures, and inference algorithms.

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Cited by 8 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Retrieval-Augmented Generation as Noisy In-Context Learning: A Unified Theory and Risk Bounds

    cs.LG 2025-06 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    RAG in in-context linear regression has an exact bias-variance tradeoff and a finite-sample bound revealing a generalization ceiling as retrieved examples grow.

  2. Surprise Calibration for Better In-Context Learning

    cs.CL 2025-06 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Surprise Calibration uses the model's own surprise at each demonstration's label to dynamically correct class priors in in-context learning, improving accuracy on eight NLP benchmarks.

  3. Open-Set Living Need Prediction with Large Language Models

    cs.AI 2025-06 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    PIGEON uses LLMs with retrieved user history and Maslow's hierarchy to predict open-set living needs in free text, improving life service recall over closed-set baselines.

  4. CrossICL: Cross-Task In-Context Learning via Unsupervised Demonstration Transfer

    cs.CL 2025-05 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    CrossICL reuses demonstrations from similar source tasks, rewriting them into the target task's format, and improves zero-shot ICL on Super-NI without target-task annotations.

  5. Learning to Select In-Context Demonstration Preferred by Large Language Model

    cs.LG 2025-05 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A generative preference-learning method trains a latent demonstration selector from LLM feedback and improves few-shot in-context learning performance on most of 19 benchmark datasets.

  6. DCG-SQL: Enhancing In-Context Learning for Text-to-SQL with Deep Contextual Schema Link Graph

    cs.AI 2025-05 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    DCG-SQL retrieves text-to-SQL demonstrations by embedding a question-to-schema link graph, improving execution accuracy on Spider by up to about 10 points over random demonstrations on small LLMs.

  7. The Role of Diversity in In-Context Learning for Large Language Models

    cs.CL 2025-05 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Diversity-aware selection of in-context examples improves performance on complex and out-of-distribution tasks, though effect sizes are often modest.

  8. Prompt as a Data Type: In-Database LLM Prompt Management and Rewriting

    cs.DB 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Treating LLM prompts as tuple-level database values lets a DBMS rewrite prompts using schema, constraints, and statistics, improving validity and cost-quality trade-offs.

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