LeTS: Learning to Think-and-Search via Process-and-Outcome Reward Hybridization

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Zhang, Qi, Yang, Shouqing, Gao, Lirong, Chen, Hao, Hu, Xiaomeng, Chen, Jinglei, Wang, Jiexiang, Guo, Sheng, Zheng, Bo, Wang, Haobo, Zhao, Junbo
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Publié: 2025
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author Zhang, Qi
Yang, Shouqing
Gao, Lirong
Chen, Hao
Hu, Xiaomeng
Chen, Jinglei
Wang, Jiexiang
Guo, Sheng
Zheng, Bo
Wang, Haobo
Zhao, Junbo
author_facet Zhang, Qi
Yang, Shouqing
Gao, Lirong
Chen, Hao
Hu, Xiaomeng
Chen, Jinglei
Wang, Jiexiang
Guo, Sheng
Zheng, Bo
Wang, Haobo
Zhao, Junbo
contents Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities in reasoning with the emergence of reasoning models like OpenAI-o1 and DeepSeek-R1. Recent research focuses on integrating reasoning capabilities into the realm of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) via outcome-supervised reinforcement learning (RL) approaches, while the correctness of intermediate think-and-search steps is usually neglected. To address this issue, we design a process-level reward module to mitigate the unawareness of intermediate reasoning steps in outcome-level supervision without additional annotation. Grounded on this, we propose Learning to Think-and-Search (LeTS), a novel framework that hybridizes stepwise process reward and outcome-based reward to current RL methods for RAG. Extensive experiments demonstrate the generalization and inference efficiency of LeTS across various RAG benchmarks. In addition, these results reveal the potential of process- and outcome-level reward hybridization in boosting LLMs' reasoning ability via RL under other scenarios. The code will be released soon.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_17447
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle LeTS: Learning to Think-and-Search via Process-and-Outcome Reward Hybridization
Zhang, Qi
Yang, Shouqing
Gao, Lirong
Chen, Hao
Hu, Xiaomeng
Chen, Jinglei
Wang, Jiexiang
Guo, Sheng
Zheng, Bo
Wang, Haobo
Zhao, Junbo
Computation and Language
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities in reasoning with the emergence of reasoning models like OpenAI-o1 and DeepSeek-R1. Recent research focuses on integrating reasoning capabilities into the realm of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) via outcome-supervised reinforcement learning (RL) approaches, while the correctness of intermediate think-and-search steps is usually neglected. To address this issue, we design a process-level reward module to mitigate the unawareness of intermediate reasoning steps in outcome-level supervision without additional annotation. Grounded on this, we propose Learning to Think-and-Search (LeTS), a novel framework that hybridizes stepwise process reward and outcome-based reward to current RL methods for RAG. Extensive experiments demonstrate the generalization and inference efficiency of LeTS across various RAG benchmarks. In addition, these results reveal the potential of process- and outcome-level reward hybridization in boosting LLMs' reasoning ability via RL under other scenarios. The code will be released soon.
title LeTS: Learning to Think-and-Search via Process-and-Outcome Reward Hybridization
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.17447