Hidden in Plain Sight
Class Competition Focuses Attribution Maps

Abstract. Attribution methods reveal which input features a neural network uses for a prediction, adding transparency to their decisions. A common problem is that these attributions seem unspecific, highlighting both important and irrelevant features. We revisit the common attribution pipeline and observe that using logits as attribution target is a main cause of this phenomenon. We show that the solution is in plain sight: considering distributions of attributions over multiple classes using existing attribution methods yields specific and fine-grained attributions. On common benchmarks, including the grid-pointing game and randomization-based sanity checks, this improves the ability of 18 attribution methods across 7 architectures up to 2×, agnostic to model architecture.

Implementation

the Python source (August 2025) by Nils P. Walter.
simple explanation of the paper (August 2025) by Nils P. Walter

Related Publications

Walter, NP, Vreeken, J & Fischer, J Hidden in Plain Sight – Class Competition Focuses Attribution Maps. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), PMLR, 2026. (26.6% acceptance rate)
Walter, NP, Vreeken, J & Fischer, J Hidden in Plain Sight - Class Competition Focuses Attribution Maps. Technical Report 2503.07346, arXiv, 2025.