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arXiv · 2508.12061

VARAN: Variational Inference for Self-Supervised Speech Models Fine-Tuning on Downstream Tasks

Daria Diatlova·Nikita Balagansky·Alexander Varlamov·Egor Spirin
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Abstract

Conventional methods for aggregating layers in fine-tuned self-supervised speech models, such as using the final layer or weighted sum, suffer from information bottlenecks and static feature weighting for all dataset examples. We propose VARAN, a framework that dynamically tailors layer aggregation to individual inputs. By employing layer-specialized probing heads and data-dependent weighting, VARAN adaptively prioritizes layer's features based on input. Evaluations on automatic speech recognition and speech emotion recognition tasks demonstrate VARAN's superior performance, particularly when using the LoRA fine-tuning technique. The framework resolves the trade-off between preserving layer-specific information and enabling flexible feature utilization, advancing efficient adaptation of self-supervised speech representations.

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Daria Diatlova, Nikita Balagansky, Alexander Varlamov, Egor Spirin. 2025-08-16. VARAN: Variational Inference for Self-Supervised Speech Models Fine-Tuning on Downstream Tasks. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.12061

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