Imagine while Reasoning in Space: Multimodal Visualization-of-Thought

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Li, Chengzu, Wu, Wenshan, Zhang, Huanyu, Xia, Yan, Mao, Shaoguang, Dong, Li, Vulić, Ivan, Wei, Furu
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Li, Chengzu
Wu, Wenshan
Zhang, Huanyu
Xia, Yan
Mao, Shaoguang
Dong, Li
Vulić, Ivan
Wei, Furu
author_facet Li, Chengzu
Wu, Wenshan
Zhang, Huanyu
Xia, Yan
Mao, Shaoguang
Dong, Li
Vulić, Ivan
Wei, Furu
contents Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting has proven highly effective for enhancing complex reasoning in Large Language Models (LLMs) and Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs). Yet, it struggles in complex spatial reasoning tasks. Nonetheless, human cognition extends beyond language alone, enabling the remarkable capability to think in both words and images. Inspired by this mechanism, we propose a new reasoning paradigm, Multimodal Visualization-of-Thought (MVoT). It enables visual thinking in MLLMs by generating image visualizations of their reasoning traces. To ensure high-quality visualization, we introduce token discrepancy loss into autoregressive MLLMs. This innovation significantly improves both visual coherence and fidelity. We validate this approach through several dynamic spatial reasoning tasks. Experimental results reveal that MVoT demonstrates competitive performance across tasks. Moreover, it exhibits robust and reliable improvements in the most challenging scenarios where CoT fails. Ultimately, MVoT establishes new possibilities for complex reasoning tasks where visual thinking can effectively complement verbal reasoning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_07542
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Imagine while Reasoning in Space: Multimodal Visualization-of-Thought
Li, Chengzu
Wu, Wenshan
Zhang, Huanyu
Xia, Yan
Mao, Shaoguang
Dong, Li
Vulić, Ivan
Wei, Furu
Computation and Language
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting has proven highly effective for enhancing complex reasoning in Large Language Models (LLMs) and Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs). Yet, it struggles in complex spatial reasoning tasks. Nonetheless, human cognition extends beyond language alone, enabling the remarkable capability to think in both words and images. Inspired by this mechanism, we propose a new reasoning paradigm, Multimodal Visualization-of-Thought (MVoT). It enables visual thinking in MLLMs by generating image visualizations of their reasoning traces. To ensure high-quality visualization, we introduce token discrepancy loss into autoregressive MLLMs. This innovation significantly improves both visual coherence and fidelity. We validate this approach through several dynamic spatial reasoning tasks. Experimental results reveal that MVoT demonstrates competitive performance across tasks. Moreover, it exhibits robust and reliable improvements in the most challenging scenarios where CoT fails. Ultimately, MVoT establishes new possibilities for complex reasoning tasks where visual thinking can effectively complement verbal reasoning.
title Imagine while Reasoning in Space: Multimodal Visualization-of-Thought
topic Computation and Language
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.07542