aiqbench analysis
This research addresses a critical flaw in Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) for Large Vision-Language Models, where outcome-level rewards inadvertently reinforce unsupported visual claims. The authors introduce Persistence-Aware Credit Gating (PACG), a method that decouples evidence sensitivity from claim persistence to penalize hallucinations without requiring additional labels or inference overhead. By improving both benchmark accuracy and the model's ability to retract unsupported assertions, this work advances the reliability of multimodal reasoning systems.
Visual sensitivity is not claim retractability: persistence-aware credit assignment for multimodal reinforcement learning
arXiv:2609.36572v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has been extended to Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs), and perception-aware methods further encourage policies to rely on visual evidence. Yet relying on the image does not guarantee that visual claims are supported by it. Before RL training, 27.81% of the correctly answered responses of Qwen2.5-VL-7B on four multimodal reasoning benchmarks contain at least one direct visual claim that the image does not support. Since outcome-level RL rewards each response as a whole, these claims inherit the positive credit of the correct answer. We introduce a fixed-rollout counterfactual diagnostic that re-scores the same response under an intervened image to separate Evidence-Function Sensitivity (EFS), how strongly the model's predictions change, from claim persistence, whether the model keeps supporting the same claim rather than retracting it. The diagnostic reveals Sensitivity-Persistence Decoupling (SPD): under DAPO and VPPO, EFS increases and claims become more retractable overall, yet unsupported claims become significantly more persistent, whereas GRPO raises EFS without this deterioration. We therefore propose Persistence-Aware Credit Gating (PACG), which attenuates positive credit for unusually persistent visual claims and leaves all other credit unchanged. It requires no supported/unsupported labels and adds no inference cost. On Qwen2.5-VL-7B, PACG raises the nine-benchmark average over three seeds from 58.1% to 59.9% with DAPO and from 59.8% to 60.9% with VPPO, while making unsupported claims more retractable. The gains extend to a larger model, a newer backbone, and the accuracy of HallusionBench also improves consistently. These results suggest that visual sensitivity and claim retractability are complementary dimensions of multimodal credit assignment.
Abstract:Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has been extended to Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs), and perception-aware methods further encourage policies to rely on visual evidence. Yet relying on the image does not guarantee that visual claims are supported by it. Before RL training, 27.81% of the correctly answered responses of Qwen2.5-VL-7B on four multimodal reasoning benchmarks contain at least one direct visual claim that the image does not support. Since outcome-level RL rewards each response as a whole, these claims inherit the positive credit of the correct answer. We introduce a fixed-rollout counterfactual diagnostic that re-scores the same response under an intervened image to separate Evidence-Function Sensitivity (EFS), how strongly the model's predictions change, from claim persistence, whether the model keeps supporting the same claim rather than retracting it. The diagnostic reveals Sensitivity-Persistence Decoupling (SPD): under DAPO and VPPO, EFS increases and claims become more retractable overall, yet unsupported claims become significantly more persistent, whereas GRPO raises EFS without this deterioration. We therefore propose Persistence-Aware Credit Gating (PACG), which attenuates positive credit for unusually persistent visual claims and leaves all other credit unchanged. It requires no supported/unsupported labels and adds no inference cost. On Qwen2.5-VL-7B, PACG raises the nine-benchmark average over three seeds from 58.1% to 59.9% with DAPO and from 59.8% to 60.9% with VPPO, while making unsupported claims more retractable. The gains extend to a larger model, a newer backbone, and the accuracy of HallusionBench also improves consistently. These results suggest that visual sensitivity and claim retractability are complementary dimensions of multimodal credit assignment.
Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
arXiv:2609.36572 [cs.AI]
(or arXiv:2609.36572v1 [cs.AI] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.36572 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
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