From Priors to Perception: Grounding Video-LLMs in Physical Reality

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhao, Zicheng, Gan, Chaofan, Li, Shijie, Lin, Weiyao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Zhao, Zicheng
Gan, Chaofan
Li, Shijie
Lin, Weiyao
author_facet Zhao, Zicheng
Gan, Chaofan
Li, Shijie
Lin, Weiyao
contents While Video Large Language Models (Video-LLMs) excel in general understanding, they exhibit systematic deficits in fine-grained physical reasoning. Existing interventions not only suffer from limited generalization but fundamentally conflate generative artifacts with genuine physical fallacies. Furthermore, we find that models fail systematically not only in anti-physics anomalies but also in counter-intuitive scenarios where visual facts contradict statistical expectations. Accordingly, we propose the Unified Attribution Theory: this dual failure stems not from perception deficiency, but from Semantic Prior Dominance -- the reasoning mechanism is deeply hijacked by internal narrative scripts. To address this, we construct the Programmatic Adversarial Curriculum (PACC), the first high-fidelity adversarial video dataset synthesized based on physical laws, thoroughly decoupling visual artifacts from logical errors. Concurrently, we design the Visual-Anchored Reasoning Chain (VARC) to force models to explicitly ground their judgments in low-level visual facts prior to logical adjudication. Experiments demonstrate that without invasive architectural modifications, standard LoRA fine-tuning with the PACC curriculum effectively neutralizes prior interference in state-of-the-art (SOTA) models, yielding a substantial leap in physical reasoning capabilities.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_04515
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle From Priors to Perception: Grounding Video-LLMs in Physical Reality
Zhao, Zicheng
Gan, Chaofan
Li, Shijie
Lin, Weiyao
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
While Video Large Language Models (Video-LLMs) excel in general understanding, they exhibit systematic deficits in fine-grained physical reasoning. Existing interventions not only suffer from limited generalization but fundamentally conflate generative artifacts with genuine physical fallacies. Furthermore, we find that models fail systematically not only in anti-physics anomalies but also in counter-intuitive scenarios where visual facts contradict statistical expectations. Accordingly, we propose the Unified Attribution Theory: this dual failure stems not from perception deficiency, but from Semantic Prior Dominance -- the reasoning mechanism is deeply hijacked by internal narrative scripts. To address this, we construct the Programmatic Adversarial Curriculum (PACC), the first high-fidelity adversarial video dataset synthesized based on physical laws, thoroughly decoupling visual artifacts from logical errors. Concurrently, we design the Visual-Anchored Reasoning Chain (VARC) to force models to explicitly ground their judgments in low-level visual facts prior to logical adjudication. Experiments demonstrate that without invasive architectural modifications, standard LoRA fine-tuning with the PACC curriculum effectively neutralizes prior interference in state-of-the-art (SOTA) models, yielding a substantial leap in physical reasoning capabilities.
title From Priors to Perception: Grounding Video-LLMs in Physical Reality
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.04515