REST: Stress Testing Large Reasoning Models by Asking Multiple Problems at Once

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Pan, Zhuoshi, Pei, Qizhi, Li, Yu, Sun, Qiyao, Tang, Zinan, Zhao, H. Vicky, He, Conghui, Wu, Lijun
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Pan, Zhuoshi
Pei, Qizhi
Li, Yu
Sun, Qiyao
Tang, Zinan
Zhao, H. Vicky
He, Conghui
Wu, Lijun
author_facet Pan, Zhuoshi
Pei, Qizhi
Li, Yu
Sun, Qiyao
Tang, Zinan
Zhao, H. Vicky
He, Conghui
Wu, Lijun
contents Recent Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) have achieved remarkable progress on task-specific benchmarks, yet their evaluation methods remain constrained by isolated problem-solving paradigms. Existing benchmarks predominantly assess single-question reasoning through sequential testing, resulting critical limitations: (1) vulnerability to data contamination and less challenging (e.g., DeepSeek-R1 achieves 97.0% on MATH500), forcing costly creation of new questions with large human efforts, (2) failure to evaluate models under multi-context pressure, a key requirement for real-world deployment. To bridge this gap, we present REST (Reasoning Evaluation through Simultaneous Testing), a stress-testing framework that exposes LRMs to multiple problems simultaneously. Beyond basic reasoning, REST evaluates several under-tested capabilities: contextual priority allocation, cross-problem interference resistance, and dynamic cognitive load management. Our evaluation reveals several striking findings: Even state-of-the-art (SOTA) models like DeepSeek-R1 exhibit substantial performance degradation under stress testing. Crucially, REST demonstrates stronger discriminative power than existing benchmarks, revealing pronounced performance differences among models that exhibit similar, near-ceiling performance under single-question evaluations. Some key insights emerge from our analysis: (1) the "overthinking trap" is a critical factor contributing to the performance degradation; (2) the models trained with "long2short" technique preserve more accuracy of their single-problem performance under REST, outperforming standard-trained counterparts. These results establish REST as a cost-efficient, future-proof evaluation paradigm that better reflects real-world reasoning demands while reducing reliance on continuous human annotation. Code and results are available at https://opendatalab.github.io/REST.
format Preprint
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institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle REST: Stress Testing Large Reasoning Models by Asking Multiple Problems at Once
Pan, Zhuoshi
Pei, Qizhi
Li, Yu
Sun, Qiyao
Tang, Zinan
Zhao, H. Vicky
He, Conghui
Wu, Lijun
Computation and Language
Recent Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) have achieved remarkable progress on task-specific benchmarks, yet their evaluation methods remain constrained by isolated problem-solving paradigms. Existing benchmarks predominantly assess single-question reasoning through sequential testing, resulting critical limitations: (1) vulnerability to data contamination and less challenging (e.g., DeepSeek-R1 achieves 97.0% on MATH500), forcing costly creation of new questions with large human efforts, (2) failure to evaluate models under multi-context pressure, a key requirement for real-world deployment. To bridge this gap, we present REST (Reasoning Evaluation through Simultaneous Testing), a stress-testing framework that exposes LRMs to multiple problems simultaneously. Beyond basic reasoning, REST evaluates several under-tested capabilities: contextual priority allocation, cross-problem interference resistance, and dynamic cognitive load management. Our evaluation reveals several striking findings: Even state-of-the-art (SOTA) models like DeepSeek-R1 exhibit substantial performance degradation under stress testing. Crucially, REST demonstrates stronger discriminative power than existing benchmarks, revealing pronounced performance differences among models that exhibit similar, near-ceiling performance under single-question evaluations. Some key insights emerge from our analysis: (1) the "overthinking trap" is a critical factor contributing to the performance degradation; (2) the models trained with "long2short" technique preserve more accuracy of their single-problem performance under REST, outperforming standard-trained counterparts. These results establish REST as a cost-efficient, future-proof evaluation paradigm that better reflects real-world reasoning demands while reducing reliance on continuous human annotation. Code and results are available at https://opendatalab.github.io/REST.
title REST: Stress Testing Large Reasoning Models by Asking Multiple Problems at Once
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.10541