DualRAG: A Dual-Process Approach to Integrate Reasoning and Retrieval for Multi-Hop Question Answering
This addresses complex multi-hop reasoning tasks for applications requiring dynamic knowledge integration, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing iterative retrieval methods.
The paper tackled the challenge of multi-hop question answering by proposing DualRAG, a dual-process framework that integrates reasoning and retrieval, resulting in improved answer accuracy and coherence, sometimes surpassing performance with oracle knowledge access.
Multi-Hop Question Answering (MHQA) tasks permeate real-world applications, posing challenges in orchestrating multi-step reasoning across diverse knowledge domains. While existing approaches have been improved with iterative retrieval, they still struggle to identify and organize dynamic knowledge. To address this, we propose DualRAG, a synergistic dual-process framework that seamlessly integrates reasoning and retrieval. DualRAG operates through two tightly coupled processes: Reasoning-augmented Querying (RaQ) and progressive Knowledge Aggregation (pKA). They work in concert: as RaQ navigates the reasoning path and generates targeted queries, pKA ensures that newly acquired knowledge is systematically integrated to support coherent reasoning. This creates a virtuous cycle of knowledge enrichment and reasoning refinement. Through targeted fine-tuning, DualRAG preserves its sophisticated reasoning and retrieval capabilities even in smaller-scale models, demonstrating its versatility and core advantages across different scales. Extensive experiments demonstrate that this dual-process approach substantially improves answer accuracy and coherence, approaching, and in some cases surpassing, the performance achieved with oracle knowledge access. These results establish DualRAG as a robust and efficient solution for complex multi-hop reasoning tasks.