MazeEval: A Benchmark for Testing Sequential Decision-Making in Language Models
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866916867102212096 |
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| author | Einarsson, Hafsteinn |
| author_facet | Einarsson, Hafsteinn |
| contents | As Large Language Models (LLMs) increasingly power autonomous agents in robotics and embodied AI, understanding their spatial reasoning capabilities becomes crucial for ensuring reliable real-world deployment. Despite advances in language understanding, current research lacks evaluation of how LLMs perform spatial navigation without visual cues, a fundamental requirement for agents operating with limited sensory information. This paper addresses this gap by introducing MazeEval, a benchmark designed to isolate and evaluate pure spatial reasoning in LLMs through coordinate-based maze navigation tasks. Our methodology employs a function-calling interface where models navigate mazes of varying complexity ($5\times 5$ to $15\times 15$ grids) using only coordinate feedback and distance-to-wall information, excluding visual input to test fundamental spatial cognition. We evaluate eight state-of-the-art LLMs across identical mazes in both English and Icelandic to assess cross-linguistic transfer of spatial abilities. Our findings reveal striking disparities: while OpenAI's O3 achieves perfect navigation for mazes up to size $30\times 30$, other models exhibit catastrophic failure beyond $9\times 9$ mazes, with 100% of failures attributed to excessive looping behavior where models revisit a cell at least 10 times. We document a significant performance degradation in Icelandic, with models solving mazes 3-4 sizes smaller than in English, suggesting spatial reasoning in LLMs emerges from linguistic patterns rather than language-agnostic mechanisms. These results have important implications for global deployment of LLM-powered autonomous systems, showing spatial intelligence remains fundamentally constrained by training data availability and highlighting the need for architectural innovations to achieve reliable navigation across linguistic contexts. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_20395 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | MazeEval: A Benchmark for Testing Sequential Decision-Making in Language Models Einarsson, Hafsteinn Artificial Intelligence As Large Language Models (LLMs) increasingly power autonomous agents in robotics and embodied AI, understanding their spatial reasoning capabilities becomes crucial for ensuring reliable real-world deployment. Despite advances in language understanding, current research lacks evaluation of how LLMs perform spatial navigation without visual cues, a fundamental requirement for agents operating with limited sensory information. This paper addresses this gap by introducing MazeEval, a benchmark designed to isolate and evaluate pure spatial reasoning in LLMs through coordinate-based maze navigation tasks. Our methodology employs a function-calling interface where models navigate mazes of varying complexity ($5\times 5$ to $15\times 15$ grids) using only coordinate feedback and distance-to-wall information, excluding visual input to test fundamental spatial cognition. We evaluate eight state-of-the-art LLMs across identical mazes in both English and Icelandic to assess cross-linguistic transfer of spatial abilities. Our findings reveal striking disparities: while OpenAI's O3 achieves perfect navigation for mazes up to size $30\times 30$, other models exhibit catastrophic failure beyond $9\times 9$ mazes, with 100% of failures attributed to excessive looping behavior where models revisit a cell at least 10 times. We document a significant performance degradation in Icelandic, with models solving mazes 3-4 sizes smaller than in English, suggesting spatial reasoning in LLMs emerges from linguistic patterns rather than language-agnostic mechanisms. These results have important implications for global deployment of LLM-powered autonomous systems, showing spatial intelligence remains fundamentally constrained by training data availability and highlighting the need for architectural innovations to achieve reliable navigation across linguistic contexts. |
| title | MazeEval: A Benchmark for Testing Sequential Decision-Making in Language Models |
| topic | Artificial Intelligence |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.20395 |