Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Cheng, Pengzhou, Dong, Lingzhong, Wu, Zeng, Wu, Zongru, Tang, Xiangru, Qin, Chengwei, Zhang, Zhuosheng, Liu, Gongshen
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00496
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914072356716544
author Cheng, Pengzhou
Dong, Lingzhong
Wu, Zeng
Wu, Zongru
Tang, Xiangru
Qin, Chengwei
Zhang, Zhuosheng
Liu, Gongshen
author_facet Cheng, Pengzhou
Dong, Lingzhong
Wu, Zeng
Wu, Zongru
Tang, Xiangru
Qin, Chengwei
Zhang, Zhuosheng
Liu, Gongshen
contents Although numerous strategies have recently been proposed to enhance the autonomous interaction capabilities of multimodal agents in graphical user interface (GUI), their reliability remains limited when faced with complex or out-of-domain tasks. This raises a fundamental question: Are existing multimodal agents reasoning spuriously? In this paper, we propose \textbf{Agent-ScanKit}, a systematic probing framework to unravel the memory and reasoning capabilities of multimodal agents under controlled perturbations. Specifically, we introduce three orthogonal probing paradigms: visual-guided, text-guided, and structure-guided, each designed to quantify the contributions of memorization and reasoning without requiring access to model internals. In five publicly available GUI benchmarks involving 18 multimodal agents, the results demonstrate that mechanical memorization often outweighs systematic reasoning. Most of the models function predominantly as retrievers of training-aligned knowledge, exhibiting limited generalization. Our findings underscore the necessity of robust reasoning modeling for multimodal agents in real-world scenarios, offering valuable insights toward the development of reliable multimodal agents.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_00496
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Agent-ScanKit: Unraveling Memory and Reasoning of Multimodal Agents via Sensitivity Perturbations
Cheng, Pengzhou
Dong, Lingzhong
Wu, Zeng
Wu, Zongru
Tang, Xiangru
Qin, Chengwei
Zhang, Zhuosheng
Liu, Gongshen
Computation and Language
Although numerous strategies have recently been proposed to enhance the autonomous interaction capabilities of multimodal agents in graphical user interface (GUI), their reliability remains limited when faced with complex or out-of-domain tasks. This raises a fundamental question: Are existing multimodal agents reasoning spuriously? In this paper, we propose \textbf{Agent-ScanKit}, a systematic probing framework to unravel the memory and reasoning capabilities of multimodal agents under controlled perturbations. Specifically, we introduce three orthogonal probing paradigms: visual-guided, text-guided, and structure-guided, each designed to quantify the contributions of memorization and reasoning without requiring access to model internals. In five publicly available GUI benchmarks involving 18 multimodal agents, the results demonstrate that mechanical memorization often outweighs systematic reasoning. Most of the models function predominantly as retrievers of training-aligned knowledge, exhibiting limited generalization. Our findings underscore the necessity of robust reasoning modeling for multimodal agents in real-world scenarios, offering valuable insights toward the development of reliable multimodal agents.
title Agent-ScanKit: Unraveling Memory and Reasoning of Multimodal Agents via Sensitivity Perturbations
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00496