Behind the [MASK]: Disentangling Representation and Faithfulness in DAPF-Based Dementia Detection

Pardis Ranjbar-Noiey; Natalie Parde

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arXiv · 2608.25028

Behind the [MASK]: Disentangling Representation and Faithfulness in DAPF-Based Dementia Detection

Pardis Ranjbar-Noiey·Natalie Parde

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Abstract

Spoken-language analysis via prompt-based domain-adaptive models is a promising direction for low-resource, non-invasive dementia screening, but such models remain internally opaque. We study the interpretability of the Domain-Adapted models via Prompt-based Fine-tuning (DAPF) framework, which casts dementia detection as diagnosis-related masked-token prediction. We interpret DAPF and strong baselines using a variety of probing and analysis techniques, finding that DAPF achieved the best overall performance (accuracy=0.83 and macro-F1=0.83) with diagnosis most recoverable from its [MASK] representation. However, this representational advantage did not extend to token-level explanation faithfulness. DAPF attributions primarily reflected language task vocabulary, discourse markers, and transcription artifacts, with perturbation tests showing weak or negative effects. This suggests that its masked-token interface determines diagnosis information without producing faithful token-level explanations.

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Pardis Ranjbar-Noiey, Natalie Parde. 2026-08-25. Behind the [MASK]: Disentangling Representation and Faithfulness in DAPF-Based Dementia Detection. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.25028

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