Multimodal CoT Reasoning

CoT: Chain-of-Thought

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6 papers in the last four weeks, up 100% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

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OmniSeek: Native Tool Integration for Multi-turn Audio-Visual Reasoning
Oct 1, 2026Haibo Wang, Jiteng Mu, Jialu Li +5Audio-Visual Understanding RL for Language Model Reasoning
University of California, Davis · Adobe Research
Rethinking Multi-Image Re-Representation in Multi-Image Understanding
Sep 30, 2026Gengyuan Zhang, Xiao Han, Xinyu Xie +2Visual Representation Learning Multimodal CoT Reasoning
LMU Munich · MCML
MG-Thinker: Bi-Axial Self-Reflection for Multi-Image Reasoning Grounding
Sep 29, 2026Heyu Huang, Chi Chen, Zonghao Guo +3Multimodal Grounding Multimodal CoT Reasoning
Huazhong University of Science and Technology Wuhan, China · Tsinghua University Beijing, China
Reasoning with Image Generation
Sep 14, 2026Nishad Singhi, Hector Garcia Rodriguez, Aditya Arora +2Tool Use in VLMs VLM Reasoning
Technical University of Darmstadt & hessian.AI
Reason What Matters: Retrieval-Grounded Reasoning for Universal Multimodal Embeddings
Sep 14, 2026Mingzhou Jiang, Peixi Wu, Hang Cheng +7Multimodal IR Efficient Multimodal Inference
Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University · School of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, USTC · Kuaishou Technology +1
Beyond Generation and Accuracy: Diagnosing and Enhancing Visual Chain-of-Thought for Geometry Problem Solving
Sep 11, 2026Zhitong Dong, Jicai Pan, Yingguo Gao +3Mathematical Reasoning Multimodal CoT Reasoning
1Key Laboratory of New Generation Artificial Intelligence Technology, Southeast University Group · 2Ant
MCPO: Modality-Contrastive Preference Optimization for Multimodal Chain-of-Thought Compression
Sep 4, 2026Guangheng Yang, Zhenliang Ni, Zhenkai Wu +4Efficient Multimodal Inference Multimodal Large Language Models
Huawei Technologies Ltd. Shanghai, China
Learning Where Outcomes Change:Credit-Addressable Reasoning for Multimodal Geometry
Aug 31, 2026Jiani Guo, Junjie Wang, Jie Wu +5RL for Language Model Reasoning Credit Assignment in RL
1Tsinghua University · 3Zhejiang University · 2Microsoft Research
VERDICT: Training-Free Step-Wise Verification of Multimodal Reasoning via Disagreement-Aware Consensus
Aug 11, 2026Rohit Sinha, Kunal Tilaganji, Tanuja Ganu +3Multimodal Large Language Models Multimodal CoT Reasoning
Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad · Microsoft Research
Learning from Failures: Retrieval-Centric CoT via Hard Negatives for Unified Multimodal Retrieval
Aug 6, 2026Zelong Sun, Jun Wang, Kaicheng Yang +3Multimodal IR Multimodal CoT Reasoning
Glint Lab
Trace, Verify, and Correct: A Training-Free Framework for Spatial Reasoning in Multimodal LLMs
Aug 5, 2026Yang Yang, Jiawei Chen, Tairan Chen +1Multimodal Grounding Visual Spatial Reasoning
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Multidimensional Information Processing, East China Normal University · Zhongguancun Academy · Stevens Institute of Technology
CURV: Enhancing Chart Understanding Through Curriculum Visual Grounded Reasoning
Aug 3, 2026Xuehang Guo, Pingyue Zhang, Ruiyi Zhang +6Data Visualization Chart QA
1William & Mary · 2Northwestern University · 3Adobe +1
AdaThinkV: Adaptive Thinking for Token-Efficient Video Reasoning
Aug 3, 2026Jingqi Tian, Haoji Zhang, Lin Chen +7Efficient VLM Inference RL for Language Model Reasoning
Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University · Alibaba Group · Peking University
OPLD: On-Policy Latent Distillation for Multimodal Reasoning
Jul 30, 2026Shoutai Zhu, Tianyang Xu, Bin Sun +3Multimodal Reasoning Latent Visual Reasoning
ByteDance
Talked Out of the Truth: Sycophancy in the Reasoning Chains of Multimodal Models
Jul 30, 2026Mahir Numayeer Islam, Gakuto Okuyama, Nikolaus Siauw +3LLM Sycophancy Multimodal CoT Reasoning
Adelaide University · Akita International University · RNA Tech +2
See2Think: Do Multimodal Models Really Use Intermediate Visual States?
Jul 29, 2026Siyu Yan, Zhuoran Yan, Haiying Xu +10Visual Reasoning Multimodal Reasoning
1The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · 3Shanghai AI Laboratory · 2Central South University +4
Mixture-of-Thought-Tokens: Unifying Perception and Reasoning for Free-form Multimodal Grounding
Jul 27, 2026Tianyi Gao, Han Fang, Tianyi Ding +9Multimodal Grounding Multimodal Large Language Models
State Key Laboratory of Human-Machine Hybrid Augmented Intelligence, Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Xi’an Jiaotong University · Xingchen AGI Lab, China Telecom Artificial Intelligence Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd · Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications +2
Offline-Online Curriculum RL for Multimodal Reasoning
Jul 26, 2026Wendi Deng, Hang Du, Guoshun Nan +11Reinforcement Learning RL for Language Model Reasoning
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, 100876, China. · BUPT Shenzhen Institute, ShenZhen, 518038, China. · Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA. +4
EVL-MCoT: Enhanced Vision-Language Multi-CoT for Harmful Meme Detection
Jul 24, 2026Hao Yang, Jin Wang, Xuejie ZhangContent Moderation VLM Reasoning
School of Information Science and Engineering, Yunnan University, Kunming, China
Visual Saliency Steering Distillation for Multimodal Chain-of-Thought Reasoning
Jul 24, 2026Hao Yang, Jin Wang, Xuejie ZhangVLM Distillation Multimodal QA
School of Information Science and Engineering, Yunnan University, Kunming, China
Constraint-Anchored Reasoning Traces
Jul 18, 2026Zehua Cheng, Wei Dai, Jiahao SunVisual Question Answering LLM Grounding
Department of Computer Science University of Oxford United Kingdom · FLock.io United Kingdom
DeltaV: Thinking with Visual State Updates in Unified Large Multimodal Models
Jul 9, 2026Pengjie Wang, Linger Deng, Zujia Zhang +6Efficient Multimodal Inference Unified Multimodal Models
Huazhong University of Science and Technology · MiLM Plus, Xiaomi Inc.
Scene Graph Thinking: Reinforcing Structured Visual Reasoning for Multimodal Large Language Models
Jul 7, 2026Zhiwei Yang, Yuanchen Wu, Nan Zhang +3Multimodal Large Language Models Multimodal CoT Reasoning
Tencent Youtu Lab, Shanghai, China · Fudan University, Shanghai, China
EventCoT: Event-centric Video Chain-of-thought for Reasoning Temporal Localization
Jul 6, 2026Youngkil Song, Yoonjae Baek, Dongwon Kim +3Temporal Video Grounding Multimodal CoT Reasoning
1Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, South Korea · 2Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, South Korea · 3Handong Global University, Pohang, South Korea
CoLT: Teaching Multi-Modal Models to Think with Chain of Latent Thoughts
Jun 30, 2026Lianyu Hu, Shengqian Qin, Zeqin Liao +4Efficient Multimodal Inference Efficient Language Model Reasoning
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore · Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China · NKIARI, Shenzhen Futian, China +2
Modality-Driven Search with Holistic Trace Judging for ARC-AGI-2
Jun 30, 2026Johan LandVisual Reasoning Multimodal Reasoning
Independent Researcher
OmniCoT: A Benchmark for Global and Multi-Step Panoramic Reasoning
Jun 29, 2026Haocong He, Chenfei Liao, Zichen Wen +13Visual Spatial Reasoning Multimodal Large Language Models
SJTU · HKUST(GZ) · Shanghai AI Lab +6
MER-R1: Multimodal Emotion Reasoning via Slow-Fast Thinking Synergy
Jun 26, 2026Zhiyuan Han, Beier Zhu, Wenwen Tong +8RL for Language Model Reasoning Multimodal Large Language Models
University of Science and Technology of China · 2SenseTime Research · Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center +1
CORTEX: A Structured Reasoning Benchmark for Trustworthy 3D Chest CT MLLMs
Jun 25, 2026Hashmat Shadab Malik, Anees Ur Rehman Hashmi, Numan Saeed +3Radiology Report Generation 3D Medical Imaging
MBZUAI, Abu Dhabi, UAE · Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany · Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Teach-to-Reason: Competition-Guided Reasoning with a Self-Improving Teacher
Jun 24, 2026Xiao Han, Hao Liu, Zhimin Bao +5Medical VQA Medical VLMs
1AIRC, Midea Group
Latent Visual States for Efficient Multimodal Reasoning
Jun 23, 2026Xiuwei Chen, Wentao Hu, Yongxin Wang +8Efficient Multimodal Inference Large Vision-Language Models
Sun Yat-sen University · The Hong Kong Polytechnic University · MBZUAI +2
Chains That See, Answers That Don't: A Multi-Aspect Evaluation Recipe for Forced Chain-of-Thought on Video-MME
Jun 22, 2026Zhichao Fan, Yanhang Li, Zexin ZhuangVLM Evaluation Video QA
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Urbana, Illinois, USA · Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts, USA · Southern Methodist University Dallas, Texas, USA
Look Light, Think Heavy: What Multimodal Chain-of-Thought Reasoning Can and Cannot Do
Jun 21, 2026Zhuoran Jin, Kejian Zhu, Hongbang Yuan +5Multimodal Reasoning VLM Reasoning
The Laboratory of Cognition and Decision Intelligence for Complex Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
ThinkDeception: A Progressive Reinforcement Learning Framework for Interpretable Multimodal Deception Detection
Jun 17, 2026Jinhao Song, Shan Liang, Yiqun Yue +2RL for Language Model Reasoning Multimodal Large Language Models
Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University · Suzhou, China
MathVis-Fine: Aligning Visual Supervision with Necessity via Progressive Dependency-Guided Training for Multimodal Mathematical Reasoning
Jun 16, 2026Wanshi Xu, Haokun Zhao, Haidong Yuan +2Multimodal Reasoning Multimodal Reward Modeling
School of ECE, Peking University · College of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Fudan University · School of Software and Microelectronics, Peking University +1
Gen-VCoT: Generative Visual Chain-of-Thought Reasoning via Diffusion-Based RGB Intermediate Representations
Jun 15, 2026Zhiqiang Zhou, Junliang Dai, Xu lingVLM Interpretability Multimodal CoT Reasoning
Hunan Chemical Industry Vocational and Technical College, Zhuzhou, Hunan 412000, China
NeRD: Neuro-Symbolic Rule Distillation for Efficient Ontology-Grounded Chain-of-Thought in Medical Image Diagnosis
Jun 14, 2026Hongxi Yang, Yiwen Jiang, Siyuan Yan +8Medical Image Classification Multimodal CoT Reasoning
Department of Data Science & AI, Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia · AIM for Health Lab, Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia · Faculty of Engineering, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia +2
CORA: Analyzing and bridging thinking-answer gap in Multimodal RLVR via Consistency-Oriented Reasoning Alignment
Jun 12, 2026Jiayue Cao, Zhicong Lu, Xuehan Sun +6Multimodal Reward Modeling VLM Reasoning
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences · 2Wuhan University · 3Tsinghua University +1
SVoT: State-aware Visualization-of-Thought for Spatial Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning
Jun 10, 2026Chao Lei, Yanbei Jiang, Markus Hiller +4Visual Spatial Reasoning Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards
School of Computing and Information Systems The University of Melbourne Melbourne, Australia
ReasonRec: A Reasoning-Augmented Multimodal Agent for Unified Recommendation
Jun 8, 2026Yihua Zhang, Mingfu Liang, Jiyan Yang +11Efficient Multimodal Inference Multimodal CoT Reasoning
Meta AI · Michigan State University · The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill +1
Optical Reasoning: Rethinking Images as an Expressive Reasoning Medium Beyond Text
Jun 8, 2026Yutong Bian, Dongjie Cheng, Heming Xia +2Visual Reasoning Multimodal Reasoning
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
CRANE: Knowledge Editing for Reasoning MLLMs
Jun 8, 2026Han Huang, Hao Wang, Mengqi Zhang +3Knowledge Editing Knowledge Conflicts in Language Models
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 101408, China, and also with the New Laboratory of Pattern Recognition (NLPR), CASIA, Beijing 100045, China · Harbin Institute of Technology, Weihai 264209, China · School of Computer Science and Technology, Shandong University, Qingdao 266237, China
TVI-CoT: Text-Visual Interleaved Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Multimodal Understanding
Jun 7, 2026Lianyu Hu, Xiaoyu Ma, Zeqin Liao +1Multimodal Large Language Models Multimodal Reasoning
College of Computing and Data Science of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
VTI-CoT: Visual-Textual Interleaved Chain of Thought for Video Reasoning
Jun 4, 2026Shufan Zhang, Ziyue Lin, Bairun Wang +4Video Reasoning VLM Reasoning
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications · University of Hong Kong · Beijing Shanwei Zhixing Technology Co., Ltd. +2
CR-Seg: Attention-Guided and CoT-Enhanced Coarse-to-Refined Reasoning Segmentation
Jun 2, 2026Yifan Cao, Xiaocui Yang, Faxian Wan +3Text-Guided Image Segmentation Promptable Image Segmentation
School of Computer Science and Engineering, Northeastern University Shenyang 110819, China
Spectral-Progressive Thought Flow for Lightweight Multimodal Reasoning
Jun 1, 2026Yixian Shen, Zhiheng Yang, Qi Bi +6Efficient Multimodal Inference Visual Spatial Reasoning
Informatics Institute, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands · University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece · Department of Computer Science, University College London +3
Attention-guided Fine-tuning of Multimodal Large Language Models Improves Chain-of-Thought Reasoning
Jun 1, 2026Sanchit Sinha, Guangzhi Xiong, Bohan Liu +2Fine-Tuning Multimodal Large Language Models
University of Virginia
Distilling Neuro-Symbolic Programs into 3D Multi-modal LLMs
May 31, 2026Wentao Mo, Yang LiuCoT Distillation 3D Spatial Reasoning
Wangxuan Institute of Computer Technology, Peking University
Reasoning Matters: Mitigate Hallucination in Multimodal Large Reasoning Models via Reasoning-Conditioned Preference Optimization
May 27, 2026Jiawei Kong, Hao Fang, Shunxiang Liao +5Multimodal Grounding Direct Preference Optimization
Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University · Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen
How and What to Imagine? Visual Thinking in Unified Multimodal Models for Cross-View Spatial Reasoning
May 26, 2026Qian Yang, Ankur Sikarwar, Huy Le +4Visual Spatial Reasoning Unified Multimodal Models
Mila - Québec AI Institute · Université de Montréal · McGill University +2
InterSketch: An Interleaved Reasoning Model with Self-correcting Visual Sketch and Stepwise Reward
May 26, 2026Zhiwei Ning, Wenwen Tong, Xiangli Kong +12Multimodal Reasoning VLM Reasoning
Shanghai Jiao Tong University · SenseTime Research · Shandong Normal University
MuCRASP: Multimodal Chain-of-thought Reasoning aware Structured Pruning
May 25, 2026Aritra Dutta, Somak AdityaVision-Language Models Efficient VLM Inference
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur
Diversity Over Frequency: Rethinking Tool Use in Visual Chain-of-Thought Agents
May 25, 2026Dong-Hee Kim, Reuben Tan, Donghyun KimTool Use in VLMs Agentic Reasoning
Department of Artificial Intelligence, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea · 2Microsoft Research, Redmond, USA.
GeoMathCode: Understanding Interleaved Math-Code Reasoning for Geometry Problem Solving
May 25, 2026Yingji Zhang, Yong Dai, André FreitasLatent Visual Reasoning Mathematical Reasoning
X-Humanoid, China · Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester, UK · Idiap Research Institute, Switzerland +1
ETCHR: Editing To Clarify and Harness Reasoning
May 22, 2026Beichen Zhang, Yuhong Liu, Jinsong Li +3Tool Use in VLMs Multimodal Reasoning
The Chinese University of Hong Kong · Shanghai AI Laboratory · Shanghai Jiao Tong University +2
LatentOmni: Rethinking Omni-Modal Understanding via Unified Audio-Visual Latent Reasoning
May 21, 2026Yifan Dai, Zhenhua Wu, Bohan Zeng +18Cross-Modal Learning Audio-Visual Understanding
School of AI, Shanghai Jiao Tong University · 2Kling Team, Kuaishou Technology · 3Peking University +5
ProCrit: Self-Elicited Multi-Perspective Reasoning with Critic-Guided Revision for Multimodal Sarcasm Detection
May 20, 2026Yingjia Xu, Jiulong Wu, Bowen Zhang +3LLM Self-Correction Multimodal CoT Reasoning
School of Computer Science and Technology, Soochow University, Suzhou, China · Baidu Inc., Beijing, China · Zhipu AI, Beijing, China
EgoCoT-Bench: Benchmarking Grounded and Verifiable Operation-Centric Chain of Thought Reasoning for MLLMs
May 19, 2026Yang Dai, Dian Jiao, Tianwei Lin +1Egocentric Video QA CoT Reasoning
Zhejiang University · Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
Beyond the Cartesian Illusion: Testing Two-Stage Multi-Modal Theory of Mind under Perceptual Bottlenecks
May 18, 2026Yajing Zhou, Xiangyu KongAudio-Visual Understanding Visual Spatial Reasoning
College of Computer Science, Beijing Information Science and Technology University, No.55 Taihang Road, Changping District, Beijing, 102206, China
TTE-Flash: Accelerating Reasoning-based Multimodal Representations via Think-Then-Embed Tokens
May 15, 2026Jianpeng Cheng, Xian Wu, Jiangfan Zhang +10Efficient Multimodal Inference Multimodal Embedding
1Meta AI

Oct 1, 2026, cs.CVJ/K move · Enter open · S save

OmniSeek: Native Tool Integration for Multi-turn Audio-Visual Reasoning

Haibo Wang, Jiteng Mu, Jialu Li, Jingru Yi+4

University of California, Davis · Adobe Research

Audio-Visual Understanding RL for Language Model Reasoning Multimodal Large Language Models Multimodal CoT Reasoning Multimodal Tool Use

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We present OmniSeek, an agentic framework that transforms an Omni Large Language Model (Omni-LLM) into an active, multi-turn reasoning agent with native tool use. Rather than passively processing an entire audio-visual sequence in a single forward pass, OmniSeek makes evidence acquisition part of the reasoning process: it dynamically decides whether to look or listen, and over which temporal window, to retrieve sparse but critical evidence across different modalities within long contexts. Through an iterative multi-turn protocol, the retrieved raw audio or visual segments are appended back into the context to support subsequent reasoning. To cold-start this capability, we build a data engine that synthesizes OmniTraj-170K, a corpus of multi-hop Chain-of-Thought trajectories with interleaved audio and visual evidence. We first supervise the model on these trajectories to instill multi-turn tool-use behavior, and then further optimize the policy via a two-stage reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards. Moreover, we introduce an Audio-Visual Necessity objective that explicitly rewards successful trajectories whose reasoning depends on both modalities, discouraging single-modality shortcuts. Extensive experiments across a wide range of benchmarks demonstrate that OmniSeek learns adaptive cross-modal evidence seeking and consistently improves audio-visual reasoning performance.

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