Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01034 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1866908802395144192 |
|---|---|
| author | Wang, Xiangwei Wang, Wei Chen, Ken Nimalsiri, Nanduni Halgamuge, Saman |
| author_facet | Wang, Xiangwei Wang, Wei Chen, Ken Nimalsiri, Nanduni Halgamuge, Saman |
| contents | Reinforcement Learning (RL) serves as a potent paradigm for enhancing reasoning capabilities in Large Language Models (LLMs), yet standard outcome-based approaches often suffer from reward sparsity and inefficient credit assignment. In this paper, we propose a novel framework designed to provide continuous reward signals, which introduces a Step-wise Marginal Information Gain (MIG) mechanism that quantifies the intrinsic value of reasoning steps against a Monotonic Historical Watermark, effectively filtering out training noise. To ensure disentangled credit distribution, we implement a Decoupled Masking Strategy, applying process-oriented rewards specifically to the chain-of-thought (CoT) and outcome-oriented rewards to the full completion. Additionally, we incorporate a Dual-Gated SFT objective to stabilize training with high-quality structural and factual signals. Extensive experiments across textual and multi-modal benchmarks (e.g., MATH, Super-CLEVR) demonstrate that our approach consistently outperforms baselines such as GRPO in both sample efficiency and final accuracy. Furthermore, our model exhibits superior out-of-distribution robustness, demonstrating promising zero-shot transfer capabilities to unseen and challenging reasoning tasks. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_01034 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Discovering Process-Outcome Credit in Multi-Step LLM Reasoning Wang, Xiangwei Wang, Wei Chen, Ken Nimalsiri, Nanduni Halgamuge, Saman Artificial Intelligence Computation and Language Reinforcement Learning (RL) serves as a potent paradigm for enhancing reasoning capabilities in Large Language Models (LLMs), yet standard outcome-based approaches often suffer from reward sparsity and inefficient credit assignment. In this paper, we propose a novel framework designed to provide continuous reward signals, which introduces a Step-wise Marginal Information Gain (MIG) mechanism that quantifies the intrinsic value of reasoning steps against a Monotonic Historical Watermark, effectively filtering out training noise. To ensure disentangled credit distribution, we implement a Decoupled Masking Strategy, applying process-oriented rewards specifically to the chain-of-thought (CoT) and outcome-oriented rewards to the full completion. Additionally, we incorporate a Dual-Gated SFT objective to stabilize training with high-quality structural and factual signals. Extensive experiments across textual and multi-modal benchmarks (e.g., MATH, Super-CLEVR) demonstrate that our approach consistently outperforms baselines such as GRPO in both sample efficiency and final accuracy. Furthermore, our model exhibits superior out-of-distribution robustness, demonstrating promising zero-shot transfer capabilities to unseen and challenging reasoning tasks. |
| title | Discovering Process-Outcome Credit in Multi-Step LLM Reasoning |
| topic | Artificial Intelligence Computation and Language |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01034 |