DMLR performs dynamic visual-textual interleaving in latent space using confidence-guided latent policy gradient optimization and a dynamic visual injection strategy, yielding improved multimodal reasoning on benchmarks.
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Machine mental imagery: Empower multimodal reasoning with latent visual tokens
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abstract
Vision-language models (VLMs) excel at multimodal understanding, yet their text-only decoding forces them to verbalize visual reasoning, limiting performance on tasks that demand visual imagination. Recent attempts train VLMs to render explicit images, but the heavy image-generation pre-training often hinders the reasoning ability. Inspired by the way humans reason with mental imagery-the internal construction and manipulation of visual cues-we investigate whether VLMs can reason through interleaved multimodal trajectories without producing explicit images. To this end, we present a Machine Mental Imagery framework, dubbed as Mirage, which augments VLM decoding with latent visual tokens alongside ordinary text. Concretely, whenever the model chooses to ``think visually'', it recasts its hidden states as next tokens, thereby continuing a multimodal trajectory without generating pixel-level images. Begin by supervising the latent tokens through distillation from ground-truth image embeddings, we then switch to text-only supervision to make the latent trajectory align tightly with the task objective. A subsequent reinforcement learning stage further enhances the multimodal reasoning capability. Experiments on diverse benchmarks demonstrate that Mirage unlocks stronger multimodal reasoning without explicit image generation.
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UniVLR unifies textual and visual reasoning in multimodal LLMs by compressing reasoning traces and auxiliary images into visual latent tokens for direct inference without interleaved text CoT.
CoLVR uses latent contrastive objectives with angle-based perturbation and RL trajectory rewards to increase exploratory visual reasoning in MLLMs, delivering 5-8% gains on VSP, Jigsaw, and MMStar benchmarks.
HyLaR with DePO enables effective RL in hybrid discrete-continuous spaces for multimodal models, outperforming prior MLLMs on perception and understanding benchmarks.
RL post-training on hallucination-forced multimodal data improves reasoning performance and can outperform standard training.
V-Reflection introduces a think-then-look mechanism where MLLM latent states actively interrogate visual features via two-stage distillation from a box-guided teacher to a dynamic autoregressive student, narrowing the fine-grained perception gap on benchmarks.
Laser reformulates visual reasoning via Dynamic Windowed Alignment Learning to maintain latent superposition of global features, delivering 5.03% average gains over Monet and over 97% fewer inference tokens on six benchmarks.
LLMs achieve higher accuracy than humans on compositional imagery tasks previously argued to require pictorial representations, supporting emergent propositional mental imagery in AI.
SCOLAR fixes information gain collapse in latent visual reasoning by generating independent auxiliary visual tokens via a detransformer, extending acceptable CoT length over 30x and delivering +14.12% gains on reasoning benchmarks.
RIS improves MLLM latent visual reasoning by retrieving spatial-semantic evidence, integrating it via attention bottlenecks, and synthesizing it with language transition tokens, yielding gains on V*, HRBench, MMVP, and BLINK benchmarks.
Visual latents in MLLMs are systematically silenced by autoregressive training but can be unsilenced at inference via query-guided contrastive alignment followed by a confidence-progression reward.
LaST-R1 introduces a RL post-training method called LAPO that optimizes latent Chain-of-Thought reasoning in vision-language-action models, yielding 99.9% success on LIBERO and up to 22.5% real-world gains.
Incremental visual scaffolding using multimodal models improves persistent common ground representation in situated dialogue by reducing representational blur compared to text-only approaches, with hybrid text-visual yielding best results on the IndiRef benchmark.
Perception Programs rewrite dense visual tool outputs into language-native summaries, boosting MLLM accuracy by 15-45% absolute on BLINK perception tasks and setting new state-of-the-art results.
Visual replay module and adaptive depth scaling improve multimodal latent reasoning, reaching SOTA benchmarks with faster inference than explicit chain-of-thought methods.
Thinking with Drafting reconceptualizes visual reasoning as optical decompression by forcing models to draft mental models into executable DSL code for deterministic self-verification on the VisAlg benchmark.
SLVR enriches latent visual representations with fine-grained attribute semantics via supervised first-stage learning and multi-query alignment via M-GRPO, yielding improved robustness on region-level reasoning tasks.
DLR is a new reinforced latent reasoning method for VLMs that decomposes queries, uses continuous visual latents, and outperforms text-only and multimodal CoT baselines on vision-centric benchmarks with better interpretability.
Reason-IAD improves explainable industrial anomaly detection by combining retrieval-augmented category knowledge with entropy-guided latent reasoning and dynamic visual patch injection in MLLMs.
citing papers explorer
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Reasoning Within the Mind: Dynamic Multimodal Interleaving in Latent Space
DMLR performs dynamic visual-textual interleaving in latent space using confidence-guided latent policy gradient optimization and a dynamic visual injection strategy, yielding improved multimodal reasoning on benchmarks.
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UniVLR: Unifying Text and Vision in Visual Latent Reasoning for Multimodal LLMs
UniVLR unifies textual and visual reasoning in multimodal LLMs by compressing reasoning traces and auxiliary images into visual latent tokens for direct inference without interleaved text CoT.
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CoLVR uses latent contrastive objectives with angle-based perturbation and RL trajectory rewards to increase exploratory visual reasoning in MLLMs, delivering 5-8% gains on VSP, Jigsaw, and MMStar benchmarks.
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Hybrid Latent Reasoning with Decoupled Policy Optimization
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Understanding the Role of Hallucination in Reinforcement Post-Training of Multimodal Reasoning Models
RL post-training on hallucination-forced multimodal data improves reasoning performance and can outperform standard training.
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V-Reflection: Transforming MLLMs from Passive Observers to Active Interrogators
V-Reflection introduces a think-then-look mechanism where MLLM latent states actively interrogate visual features via two-stage distillation from a box-guided teacher to a dynamic autoregressive student, narrowing the fine-grained perception gap on benchmarks.
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Forest Before Trees: Latent Superposition for Efficient Visual Reasoning
Laser reformulates visual reasoning via Dynamic Windowed Alignment Learning to maintain latent superposition of global features, delivering 5.03% average gains over Monet and over 97% fewer inference tokens on six benchmarks.
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Artificial Phantasia: Emergent Mental Imagery in Large Language Models
LLMs achieve higher accuracy than humans on compositional imagery tasks previously argued to require pictorial representations, supporting emergent propositional mental imagery in AI.
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Self-Consistent Latent Reasoning: Long Latent Sequence Reasoning for Vision-Language Model
SCOLAR fixes information gain collapse in latent visual reasoning by generating independent auxiliary visual tokens via a detransformer, extending acceptable CoT length over 30x and delivering +14.12% gains on reasoning benchmarks.
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Retrieve, Integrate, and Synthesize: Spatial-Semantic Grounded Latent Visual Reasoning
RIS improves MLLM latent visual reasoning by retrieving spatial-semantic evidence, integrating it via attention bottlenecks, and synthesizing it with language transition tokens, yielding gains on V*, HRBench, MMVP, and BLINK benchmarks.
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Visual Latents Know More Than They Say: Unsilencing Latent Reasoning in MLLMs
Visual latents in MLLMs are systematically silenced by autoregressive training but can be unsilenced at inference via query-guided contrastive alignment followed by a confidence-progression reward.
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LaST-R1: Reinforcing Robotic Manipulation via Adaptive Physical Latent Reasoning
LaST-R1 introduces a RL post-training method called LAPO that optimizes latent Chain-of-Thought reasoning in vision-language-action models, yielding 99.9% success on LIBERO and up to 22.5% real-world gains.
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Using Machine Mental Imagery for Representing Common Ground in Situated Dialogue
Incremental visual scaffolding using multimodal models improves persistent common ground representation in situated dialogue by reducing representational blur compared to text-only approaches, with hybrid text-visual yielding best results on the IndiRef benchmark.
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Don't Show Pixels, Show Cues: Unlocking Visual Tool Reasoning in Language Models via Perception Programs
Perception Programs rewrite dense visual tool outputs into language-native summaries, boosting MLLM accuracy by 15-45% absolute on BLINK perception tasks and setting new state-of-the-art results.
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Visual Enhanced Depth Scaling for Multimodal Latent Reasoning
Visual replay module and adaptive depth scaling improve multimodal latent reasoning, reaching SOTA benchmarks with faster inference than explicit chain-of-thought methods.
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Thinking with Drafting: Optical Decompression via Logical Reconstruction
Thinking with Drafting reconceptualizes visual reasoning as optical decompression by forcing models to draft mental models into executable DSL code for deterministic self-verification on the VisAlg benchmark.
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Semantic-Enriched Latent Visual Reasoning
SLVR enriches latent visual representations with fine-grained attribute semantics via supervised first-stage learning and multi-query alignment via M-GRPO, yielding improved robustness on region-level reasoning tasks.
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Decompose, Look, and Reason: Reinforced Latent Reasoning for VLMs
DLR is a new reinforced latent reasoning method for VLMs that decomposes queries, uses continuous visual latents, and outperforms text-only and multimodal CoT baselines on vision-centric benchmarks with better interpretability.
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Towards Explainable Industrial Anomaly Detection via Knowledge-Guided Latent Reasoning
Reason-IAD improves explainable industrial anomaly detection by combining retrieval-augmented category knowledge with entropy-guided latent reasoning and dynamic visual patch injection in MLLMs.
- Fill the GAP: A Granular Alignment Paradigm for Visual Reasoning in Multimodal Large Language Models