@inproceedings{xu-etal-2026-structmem,
title = "{S}truct{M}em: Structured Memory for Long-Horizon Behavior in {LLM}s",
author = "Xu, Buqiang and
Chen, Yijun and
Fang, Jizhan and
Zhong, Ruobin and
Yao, Yunzhi and
Zhu, Yuqi and
Du, Lun and
Deng, Shumin",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics (Volume 2: Short Papers)",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-short.12/",
doi = "10.18653/v1/2026.acl-short.12",
pages = "122--146",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-391-3",
abstract = "Long-term conversational agents need memory systems that capture relationships between events, not merely isolated facts, to support temporal reasoning and multi-hop question answering. Current approaches face a fundamental trade-off: flat memory is efficient but fails to model relational structure, while graph-based memory enables structured reasoning at the cost of expensive and fragile construction. To address these issues, we propose StructMem, a structure-enriched hierarchical memory framework that preserves event-level bindings and induces cross-event connections. By temporally anchoring dual perspectives and performing periodic semantic consolidation, StructMem improves temporal reasoning and multi-hop performance on LoCoMo, while substantially reducing token usage, API calls, and runtime compared to prior memory systems."
}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="xu-etal-2026-structmem">
<titleInfo>
<title>StructMem: Structured Memory for Long-Horizon Behavior in LLMs</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Buqiang</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Xu</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yijun</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Chen</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jizhan</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Fang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Ruobin</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhong</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yunzhi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Yao</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yuqi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhu</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Lun</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Du</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Shumin</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Deng</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2026-07</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 2: Short Papers)</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Maria</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Liakata</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Viviane</namePart>
<namePart type="given">P</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Moreira</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jiajun</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">David</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Jurgens</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">San Diego, California, United States</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
<identifier type="isbn">979-8-89176-391-3</identifier>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>Long-term conversational agents need memory systems that capture relationships between events, not merely isolated facts, to support temporal reasoning and multi-hop question answering. Current approaches face a fundamental trade-off: flat memory is efficient but fails to model relational structure, while graph-based memory enables structured reasoning at the cost of expensive and fragile construction. To address these issues, we propose StructMem, a structure-enriched hierarchical memory framework that preserves event-level bindings and induces cross-event connections. By temporally anchoring dual perspectives and performing periodic semantic consolidation, StructMem improves temporal reasoning and multi-hop performance on LoCoMo, while substantially reducing token usage, API calls, and runtime compared to prior memory systems.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">xu-etal-2026-structmem</identifier>
<identifier type="doi">10.18653/v1/2026.acl-short.12</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-short.12/</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2026-07</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>122</start>
<end>146</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T StructMem: Structured Memory for Long-Horizon Behavior in LLMs
%A Xu, Buqiang
%A Chen, Yijun
%A Fang, Jizhan
%A Zhong, Ruobin
%A Yao, Yunzhi
%A Zhu, Yuqi
%A Du, Lun
%A Deng, Shumin
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 2: Short Papers)
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-391-3
%F xu-etal-2026-structmem
%X Long-term conversational agents need memory systems that capture relationships between events, not merely isolated facts, to support temporal reasoning and multi-hop question answering. Current approaches face a fundamental trade-off: flat memory is efficient but fails to model relational structure, while graph-based memory enables structured reasoning at the cost of expensive and fragile construction. To address these issues, we propose StructMem, a structure-enriched hierarchical memory framework that preserves event-level bindings and induces cross-event connections. By temporally anchoring dual perspectives and performing periodic semantic consolidation, StructMem improves temporal reasoning and multi-hop performance on LoCoMo, while substantially reducing token usage, API calls, and runtime compared to prior memory systems.
%R 10.18653/v1/2026.acl-short.12
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-short.12/
%U https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2026.acl-short.12
%P 122-146
Markdown (Informal)
[StructMem: Structured Memory for Long-Horizon Behavior in LLMs](https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-short.12/) (Xu et al., ACL 2026)
ACL
- Buqiang Xu, Yijun Chen, Jizhan Fang, Ruobin Zhong, Yunzhi Yao, Yuqi Zhu, Lun Du, and Shumin Deng. 2026. StructMem: Structured Memory for Long-Horizon Behavior in LLMs. In Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 2: Short Papers), pages 122–146, San Diego, California, United States. Association for Computational Linguistics.