CogniTrust: Cognitive Memory-Driven Verifiable Supervision for Robust Hashing

Abstract In this paper, we study the problem of robust multi-label hashing, where label noise hinders the learning of a reliable semantic structure from data. Many existing methods rely on heuristic sample selection or consistency-based training, but lack a unified mechanism to validate and refine supervision across structural and semantic levels. Inspired by cognitive theories of human memory, we propose a novel framework called CogniTrust that unifies verifiable supervision with a triadic memory model: a) In episodic memory, feature activations are decomposed into spatial patterns that support the assessment of structural evidence and the estimation of label reliability; b) Semantic memory keeps track of class-level prototypes from structurally attentive regions to estimate the semantic plausibility of labels; c) Reconstructive memory simulates memory recall through interpolation between images using a diffusion-based mixup process, which enriches the training signals for semantically uncertain regions. These components work together, allowing supervision to be refined through the joint consideration of spatial structure and semantic information. Extensive experiments on noisy hashing benchmarks demonstrate that CogniTrust consistently outperforms a range of state-of-the-art baselines. Our results show that cognitive memory mechanisms offer a principled basis for more reliable label denoising and robust hashing.