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Main Authors: Lv, Shuai, Liu, Chang, Tang, Feng, Yuan, Yujie, Zhou, Aojun, Zhang, Kui, Yang, Xi, Song, Yangqiu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.26348
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author Lv, Shuai
Liu, Chang
Tang, Feng
Yuan, Yujie
Zhou, Aojun
Zhang, Kui
Yang, Xi
Song, Yangqiu
author_facet Lv, Shuai
Liu, Chang
Tang, Feng
Yuan, Yujie
Zhou, Aojun
Zhang, Kui
Yang, Xi
Song, Yangqiu
contents Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) achieve strong multimodal reasoning performance, yet we identify a recurring failure mode in long-form generation: as outputs grow longer, models progressively drift away from image evidence and fall back on textual priors, resulting in ungrounded reasoning and hallucinations. Interestingly, Based on attention analysis, we find that MLLMs have a latent capability for late-stage visual verification that is present but not consistently activated. Motivated by this observation, we propose Visual Re-Examination (VRE), a self-evolving training framework that enables MLLMs to autonomously perform visual introspection during reasoning without additional visual inputs. Rather than distilling visual capabilities from a stronger teacher, VRE promotes iterative self-improvement by leveraging the model itself to generate reflection traces, making visual information actionable through information gain. Extensive experiments across diverse multimodal benchmarks demonstrate that VRE consistently improves reasoning accuracy and perceptual reliability, while substantially reducing hallucinations, especially in long-chain settings. Code is available at https://github.com/Xiaobu-USTC/VRE.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_26348
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Reflect to Inform: Boosting Multimodal Reasoning via Information-Gain-Driven Verification
Lv, Shuai
Liu, Chang
Tang, Feng
Yuan, Yujie
Zhou, Aojun
Zhang, Kui
Yang, Xi
Song, Yangqiu
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) achieve strong multimodal reasoning performance, yet we identify a recurring failure mode in long-form generation: as outputs grow longer, models progressively drift away from image evidence and fall back on textual priors, resulting in ungrounded reasoning and hallucinations. Interestingly, Based on attention analysis, we find that MLLMs have a latent capability for late-stage visual verification that is present but not consistently activated. Motivated by this observation, we propose Visual Re-Examination (VRE), a self-evolving training framework that enables MLLMs to autonomously perform visual introspection during reasoning without additional visual inputs. Rather than distilling visual capabilities from a stronger teacher, VRE promotes iterative self-improvement by leveraging the model itself to generate reflection traces, making visual information actionable through information gain. Extensive experiments across diverse multimodal benchmarks demonstrate that VRE consistently improves reasoning accuracy and perceptual reliability, while substantially reducing hallucinations, especially in long-chain settings. Code is available at https://github.com/Xiaobu-USTC/VRE.
title Reflect to Inform: Boosting Multimodal Reasoning via Information-Gain-Driven Verification
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.26348