ProSR: Process-Shaped Spatial Reasoning for Reliable Chain-of-Thought in VLMs

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Li, Jiangyang, Wan, Cong, Wu, Changjie, Dong, Songlin, Zhang, Lingjun, Shi, Linzhe, Wang, Xu, Ma, Zhiheng, Zhang, Hang, Xu, Mu, Gong, Yihong
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Li, Jiangyang
Wan, Cong
Wu, Changjie
Dong, Songlin
Zhang, Lingjun
Shi, Linzhe
Wang, Xu
Ma, Zhiheng
Zhang, Hang
Xu, Mu
Gong, Yihong
author_facet Li, Jiangyang
Wan, Cong
Wu, Changjie
Dong, Songlin
Zhang, Lingjun
Shi, Linzhe
Wang, Xu
Ma, Zhiheng
Zhang, Hang
Xu, Mu
Gong, Yihong
contents Reliable spatial reasoning remains a core bottleneck for vision-language models (VLMs). Existing mainstream training paradigms for spatial reasoning largely rely on outcome alignment or process imitation, lacking explicit constraints on the reasoning process, and therefore struggle to ensure genuine visual dependence and stable reasoning trajectories. In this paper, we construct a high-quality CoT dataset covering diverse spatial phenomena and diagnose the model's reasoning process, revealing two typical types of process degradation during reinforcement learning optimization: Spurious Grounding, which bypasses visual evidence, and Tail Instability, where uncertainty abnormally rises in the later stage of reasoning. To address these issues, we propose ProSR, a process-shaping optimization framework for spatial reasoning. Through a Counterfactual Invariance Penalty and a Tail Drift Penalty, ProSR extends the optimization objective from single answer correctness to two process-level dimensions: visual dependence and trajectory stability. Experiments on multiple complex and out-of-distribution spatial reasoning benchmarks show that ProSR improves answer accuracy while generating reasoning trajectories that are more stable and more dependent on visual evidence.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_25524
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
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spellingShingle ProSR: Process-Shaped Spatial Reasoning for Reliable Chain-of-Thought in VLMs
Li, Jiangyang
Wan, Cong
Wu, Changjie
Dong, Songlin
Zhang, Lingjun
Shi, Linzhe
Wang, Xu
Ma, Zhiheng
Zhang, Hang
Xu, Mu
Gong, Yihong
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Reliable spatial reasoning remains a core bottleneck for vision-language models (VLMs). Existing mainstream training paradigms for spatial reasoning largely rely on outcome alignment or process imitation, lacking explicit constraints on the reasoning process, and therefore struggle to ensure genuine visual dependence and stable reasoning trajectories. In this paper, we construct a high-quality CoT dataset covering diverse spatial phenomena and diagnose the model's reasoning process, revealing two typical types of process degradation during reinforcement learning optimization: Spurious Grounding, which bypasses visual evidence, and Tail Instability, where uncertainty abnormally rises in the later stage of reasoning. To address these issues, we propose ProSR, a process-shaping optimization framework for spatial reasoning. Through a Counterfactual Invariance Penalty and a Tail Drift Penalty, ProSR extends the optimization objective from single answer correctness to two process-level dimensions: visual dependence and trajectory stability. Experiments on multiple complex and out-of-distribution spatial reasoning benchmarks show that ProSR improves answer accuracy while generating reasoning trajectories that are more stable and more dependent on visual evidence.
title ProSR: Process-Shaped Spatial Reasoning for Reliable Chain-of-Thought in VLMs
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.25524