TempR1: Improving Temporal Understanding of MLLMs via Temporal-Aware Multi-Task Reinforcement Learning

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wu, Tao, Yang, Li, Zhan, Gen, Zhang, Yabin, Liao, Yiting, Li, Junlin, Fu, Deliang, Zhang, Li, Wang, Limin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866911590572359680
author Wu, Tao
Yang, Li
Zhan, Gen
Zhang, Yabin
Liao, Yiting
Li, Junlin
Fu, Deliang
Zhang, Li
Wang, Limin
author_facet Wu, Tao
Yang, Li
Zhan, Gen
Zhang, Yabin
Liao, Yiting
Li, Junlin
Fu, Deliang
Zhang, Li
Wang, Limin
contents Enhancing the temporal understanding of Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) is essential for advancing long-form video analysis, enabling tasks such as temporal localization, action detection, and time-sensitive question answering. While reinforcement learning (RL) has recently been explored for improving temporal reasoning, existing approaches are often confined to limited task types and data, restricting their generalization across diverse temporal understanding scenarios. To address this challenge, we present TempR1, a temporal-aware multi-task reinforcement learning framework that systematically strengthens MLLMs' temporal comprehension. We curate a multi-task corpus that exposes the model to diverse temporal structures and semantics, and build upon the Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) algorithm to achieve stable and effective cross-task optimization. Specifically, we categorize temporal tasks into three correspondence types between predicted intervals and ground-truth instances, and design tailored localization rewards for each, enabling TempR1 to capture fine-grained temporal dependencies and adapt to different temporal patterns. Extensive experiments demonstrate that TempR1 attains state-of-the-art performance across multiple benchmarks. Moreover, its joint optimization over complementary tasks yields a strong synergistic effect, enhancing both generalization and single-task performance, establishing a scalable and principled paradigm for temporal reasoning in MLLMs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_03963
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle TempR1: Improving Temporal Understanding of MLLMs via Temporal-Aware Multi-Task Reinforcement Learning
Wu, Tao
Yang, Li
Zhan, Gen
Zhang, Yabin
Liao, Yiting
Li, Junlin
Fu, Deliang
Zhang, Li
Wang, Limin
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Enhancing the temporal understanding of Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) is essential for advancing long-form video analysis, enabling tasks such as temporal localization, action detection, and time-sensitive question answering. While reinforcement learning (RL) has recently been explored for improving temporal reasoning, existing approaches are often confined to limited task types and data, restricting their generalization across diverse temporal understanding scenarios. To address this challenge, we present TempR1, a temporal-aware multi-task reinforcement learning framework that systematically strengthens MLLMs' temporal comprehension. We curate a multi-task corpus that exposes the model to diverse temporal structures and semantics, and build upon the Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) algorithm to achieve stable and effective cross-task optimization. Specifically, we categorize temporal tasks into three correspondence types between predicted intervals and ground-truth instances, and design tailored localization rewards for each, enabling TempR1 to capture fine-grained temporal dependencies and adapt to different temporal patterns. Extensive experiments demonstrate that TempR1 attains state-of-the-art performance across multiple benchmarks. Moreover, its joint optimization over complementary tasks yields a strong synergistic effect, enhancing both generalization and single-task performance, establishing a scalable and principled paradigm for temporal reasoning in MLLMs.
title TempR1: Improving Temporal Understanding of MLLMs via Temporal-Aware Multi-Task Reinforcement Learning
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.03963