{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,18]],"date-time":"2026-03-18T02:50:42Z","timestamp":1773802242608,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":0,"publisher":"Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)","issue":"16","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["AAAI"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Referring Expression Counting (REC) extends class-level object counting to the fine-grained subclass-level, aiming to enumerate objects matching a textual expression that specifies both the class and distinguishing attribute. A fundamental challenge, however, has been overlooked: annotation points are typically placed on class-representative locations (e.g., heads), forcing models to focus on class-level features while neglecting attribute information from other visual regions (e.g., legs for ''walking''). To address this, we propose W2-Net, a novel framework that explicitly decouples the problem into ''what to count'' and ''where to see'' via a dual-query mechanism. Specifically, alongside the standard what-to-count (w2c) queries that localize the object, we introduce dedicated where-to-see (w2s) queries. The w2s queries are guided to seek and extract features from attribute-specific visual regions, enabling precise subclass discrimination. Furthermore, we introduce Subclass Separable Matching (SSM), a novel matching strategy that incorporates a repulsive force to enhance inter-subclass separability during label assignment. W2-Net significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art on the REC-8K dataset, reducing counting error by 22.5% (validation) and 18.0% (test), and improving localization F1 by 7% and 8%, respectively.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1609\/aaai.v40i16.38423","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,18]],"date-time":"2026-03-18T00:25:05Z","timestamp":1773793505000},"page":"14113-14121","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Decoupling What to Count and Where to See for Referring Expression Counting"],"prefix":"10.1609","volume":"40","author":[{"given":"Yuda","family":"Zou","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Zijian","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Yongchao","family":"Xu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]}],"member":"9382","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,14]]},"container-title":["Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence"],"original-title":[],"link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/ojs.aaai.org\/index.php\/AAAI\/article\/download\/38423\/42385","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/ojs.aaai.org\/index.php\/AAAI\/article\/download\/38423\/42385","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,18]],"date-time":"2026-03-18T00:25:05Z","timestamp":1773793505000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/ojs.aaai.org\/index.php\/AAAI\/article\/view\/38423"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,14]]},"references-count":0,"journal-issue":{"issue":"16","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,17]]}},"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1609\/aaai.v40i16.38423","relation":{},"ISSN":["2374-3468","2159-5399"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2374-3468","type":"electronic"},{"value":"2159-5399","type":"print"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,14]]}}}