Categorize Early, Integrate Late: Divergent Processing Strategies in Automatic Speech Recognition

arXiv:2601.06972v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: In speech language modeling, two architectures dominate the frontier: the Transformer and the Conformer. However, it remains unknown whether their comparable performance stems from convergent processing strategies or distinct architectural inductive biases. We introduce Architectural Fingerprinting, a probing framework that isolates the effect of architecture on representation, and apply it to a controlled suite of 24 pre-trained encoders (39M-3.3B parameters). Our analysis reveals divergent hierarchies: Conformers implement a "Categorize Ear

Source: arXiv cs.CL — read the full report at the original publisher.

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