Same Ranking, Different Winner: How Scoring Targets Shape LLM Memory Benchmarks

[2605.24060] Same Ranking, Different Winner: How Scoring Targets Shape LLM Memory Benchmarks Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Computer Science > Information Retrieval arXiv:2605.24060 (cs) [Submitted on 22 May 2026 ( v1 ), last revised 26 Aug 2026 (this version, v2)] Title: Same Ranking, Different Winner: How Scoring Targets Shape LLM Memory Benchmarks Authors: Sugam Panthi , Rabab Abdelfattah View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: Conversational-memory systems increasingly transform dialogue history into facts, summaries, timelines, and other source-linked descendants, so a single source turn can coexist with several derived memories in the same retrieval index. This raises an underspecified evaluation question: which stored form should receive retrieval credit? We show that this scoring-target choice is often left implicit and can materially change benchmark conclusions. We present TIAP, a fixed-output audit that rescores saved ranked outputs under three targets -- Raw, Source, and Canonical -- without rerunning retrieval. On LoCoMo and LongMemEval-S, switching only the credited target changes nDCG on 83.4--94.0 percent of shared queries, flips target orderings on Mem0 and MemoryOS transfer runs, and reverses parser-density recommendations. A 1,902-case semantic audit further shows that relaxed source-linked credit is fully justified only 29.2 percent of the time, despite high rubric reliability in a validation subset. These results reveal target noninvariance: conclusions about memory architectures can silently flip with a single benchmark-design choice. Conversational-memory papers should therefore define and report the scoring target explicitly. Subjects: Information Retrieval (cs.IR) Cite as: arXiv:2605.24060 [cs.IR] (or arXiv:2605.24060v2 [cs.IR] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.24060 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Sugam Panthi [ view email ] [v1] Fri, 22 May 2026 02:53:07 UTC (3,673 KB) [v2] Wed, 26 Aug 2026 21:04:47 UTC (345 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Additional Features Audio Summary Current browse context: cs.IR < prev | next > new | recent | 2026-05 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs . Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax ( What is MathJax? ) We gratefully acknowledge support from our major funders , member institutions , and all contributors. About · Help · Contact · Subscribe · Copyright · Privacy · Accessibility · Operational Status (opens in new tab) Major funding support from

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