AnE: Pushing the Reasoning Frontier of Multimodal LLMs via Anchor Evolution

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Wang, Zehao, Zeng, Yihan, Gong, Zidong, Guo, Yuanfan, Zhu, Feng, Zhang, Hongzhi, Zhang, Wei, Zuo, Wangmeng
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Wang, Zehao
Zeng, Yihan
Gong, Zidong
Guo, Yuanfan
Zhu, Feng
Zhang, Hongzhi
Zhang, Wei
Zuo, Wangmeng
author_facet Wang, Zehao
Zeng, Yihan
Gong, Zidong
Guo, Yuanfan
Zhu, Feng
Zhang, Hongzhi
Zhang, Wei
Zuo, Wangmeng
contents Post-training via Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) and Reinforcement Learning (RL) is crucial for enhancing reasoning in Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs), yet existing paradigms often reach a performance bottleneck due to the limitations of static data. While current methods leverage self-reflection or self-evolution to push these boundaries, they still suffer from cognitive drift and hallucinated reasoning paths caused by low-quality synthetic data. To address these challenges, we propose Anchor Evolution (AnE), a new paradigm that integrates truth-anchored data curation and model evolution, achieving faithful and steady performance gains at the reasoning frontier. Specifically, we propose Truth Anchor Expansion, which pinpoints the model failing frontier via trajectory rollouts and leverages ground-truth databases to retrieve high-fidelity anchors for faithful data curation. Subsequently, we introduce the Scaffold-Stripping Mechanism to internalize reasoning capabilities. This mechanism first anchors reasoning paths via scaffold-augmented supervision to mitigate the learning complexity and distribution drift of direct SFT on raw data, then leverages RL to strip the scaffold template, thereby effectively transitioning the reasoning paths into intrinsic model capabilities. Experimental results on multimodal reasoning benchmarks show that our method substantially advances the model performance frontier, improving the base model by 10.3\% across eight multimodal benchmarks and achieving state-of-the-art results. The code will be made publicly available.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_25571
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AnE: Pushing the Reasoning Frontier of Multimodal LLMs via Anchor Evolution
Wang, Zehao
Zeng, Yihan
Gong, Zidong
Guo, Yuanfan
Zhu, Feng
Zhang, Hongzhi
Zhang, Wei
Zuo, Wangmeng
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Post-training via Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) and Reinforcement Learning (RL) is crucial for enhancing reasoning in Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs), yet existing paradigms often reach a performance bottleneck due to the limitations of static data. While current methods leverage self-reflection or self-evolution to push these boundaries, they still suffer from cognitive drift and hallucinated reasoning paths caused by low-quality synthetic data. To address these challenges, we propose Anchor Evolution (AnE), a new paradigm that integrates truth-anchored data curation and model evolution, achieving faithful and steady performance gains at the reasoning frontier. Specifically, we propose Truth Anchor Expansion, which pinpoints the model failing frontier via trajectory rollouts and leverages ground-truth databases to retrieve high-fidelity anchors for faithful data curation. Subsequently, we introduce the Scaffold-Stripping Mechanism to internalize reasoning capabilities. This mechanism first anchors reasoning paths via scaffold-augmented supervision to mitigate the learning complexity and distribution drift of direct SFT on raw data, then leverages RL to strip the scaffold template, thereby effectively transitioning the reasoning paths into intrinsic model capabilities. Experimental results on multimodal reasoning benchmarks show that our method substantially advances the model performance frontier, improving the base model by 10.3\% across eight multimodal benchmarks and achieving state-of-the-art results. The code will be made publicly available.
title AnE: Pushing the Reasoning Frontier of Multimodal LLMs via Anchor Evolution
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.25571