Zero-shot cross-domain dialogue state tracking (DST) enables us to manage task-oriented dialogues in new, unseen domains without the cost of collecting in-domain data. Previous studies have implemented slot-based input improvements, such as schema-driven descriptions and question-answering formats, but still suffer from negative transfer for seen slots and inefficient transfer for unseen slots due to the significant source-target domain gap. To address these issues, we introduce a novel framework called Context-aware Auto-prompting and Instruction-following Contrastive Decoding (CAPID). This framework generates dynamic, context-aware slot queries, effectively improving the model’s transferability. Our context-aware auto-prompting approach tailors slot queries to the current dialogue context, increasing flexibility and reducing ambiguities. Additionally, an instruction-following contrastive decoding strategy helps reduce errors related to off-topic slots by penalizing deviations from the provided instructions. Extensive experiments on two datasets, with varying model sizes (from 60M to 7B), demonstrate the superior performance of CAPID. The source code is provided for reproducibility.

An ideal dialogue system requires continuous skill acquisition and adaptation to new tasks while retaining prior knowledge. Dialogue State Tracking (DST), vital in these systems, often involves learning new services, confronting catastrophic forgetting and a critical capability loss termed the “Value Selection Quandary”. To address these challenges, we introduce the Reason-of-Select (RoS) distillation method by enhancing smaller models with a novel “meta-reasoning” capability. Meta-reasoning, employing an enhanced multi-domain perspective, combines fragments of meta-knowledge from domain-specific dialogues during continual learning, transcending traditional single-perspective reasoning. This domain bootstrapping process enhances the model’s ability to dissect intricate dialogues from multiple possible values, and its domain-agnostic property aligns data distribution across different domains, effectively mitigating forgetting. Besides, two novel improvements, “multi-value resolution” strategy and Semantic Contrastive Reasoning Selection method, significantly enhance RoS by generating DST-specific selection chains and mitigating hallucinations in teachers’ reasoning, ensuring effective and reliable knowledge transfer. Extensive experiments validate the exceptional performance and robust generalization capabilities of our method.