Spatial Reasoning in Language Models

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49 papers12 papers in the last four weeks, against 2 the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

GeoReason: Bridging Logical Reasoning and Spatial Fidelity in Remote Sensing Segmentation
Oct 16, 2026Cheng Fan, Han Wu, Tingzhang Luo +3Reasoning Segmentation Remote Sensing Image Segmentation
City University of Hong Kong · School of Computer Science, Peking University · Samsung
MJev-Spatial: System One Spatial Intelligence via Native Attention Matching
Oct 15, 2026Luozheng Qin, Yuhan Zhu, Changhai Zhou +9Spatial Reasoning in Language Models Visual Spatial Reasoning
S-Space: Exploring Spatial Workspace in Multimodal Language Models
Oct 9, 2026Zhiyuan Shi, Xiang Li, Xingzhuo Guo +8Spatial Reasoning in Language Models Spatial Reasoning
SpaceCast-Bench: Evaluating Predictive Spatial Reasoning in Vision-Language Models
Oct 8, 2026Hongxing Li, Jinyue Su, Dingming Li +5Spatial Reasoning Spatial Reasoning Benchmarks
Zhejiang University
SpatialOPSD: Self-Distilling Spatial Intelligence from Verified Coding Agent Traces
Oct 8, 2026Rongxue Li, Meng Yang, Yiru Mao +6Spatial Reasoning in Language Models VLM Reasoning
Alibaba Group
SpatialChain: A Benchmark for Auditing Spatial Reasoning Faithfulness in VLMs
Oct 5, 2026Rafael Teixeira Sousa, Vinícius Paulo Lopes de Oliveira, Elisa Ayumi Masasi de Oliveira +5VLM Evaluation Spatial Reasoning Benchmarks
Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso (UFMT) · Universidade Federal de Goiás (UFG) · Advanced Knowledge Center for Immersive Technologies (AKCIT)
KilometerVision: A New Frontier for Large-Scale Spatial Intelligence in VLMs
Sep 30, 2026Aravindh Mahendran, Michael King, Matthew Koichi Grimes +12Spatial Reasoning Benchmarks Visual Spatial Reasoning
Google DeepMind, Berlin, Germany · Google DeepMind, London, UK · Princeton University, Princeton, USA +3
Soft Spatial Reasoning
Sep 30, 2026Rafi Ibn Sultan, Md. Sajid Alam Chowdhury, Saleh Zare Zade +4Visual Spatial Reasoning VLM Reasoning
Department of Computer Science, Wayne State University · Department of Radiation Oncology, Henry Ford Health · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The Ohio State University +1
SpatialCORE: Confidence-Aware Grounded Spatial Reasoning in Large Vision--Language Models
Sep 30, 2026Rafi Ibn Sultan, Xiangyu Zhou, Md. Sajid Alam Chowdhury +4Visual Spatial Reasoning Large Vision-Language Models
Department of Computer Science, Wayne State University · Department of Radiation Oncology, Henry Ford Health · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The Ohio State University +1
Who Is Left of Whom? Tracing Spatial Evidence and Role Binding in Relative-Position Reasoning
Sep 28, 2026Yingjin Song, Denis Paperno, Albert GattVLM Interpretability Spatial Reasoning
Utrecht University Utrecht, The Netherlands
SpatialSkill: Self-Evolving Skills for Cross-View Spatial Reasoning
Sep 28, 2026Ruifan Zuo, Guocheng Hu, Wanshui Gan +3Visual Spatial Reasoning VLM Reasoning
Shandong University · Shanghai AI Laboratory · Zhiyang Innovation Co., Ltd.
SpatialSpeak: QA-Native Reconstruction with Local and Global Context for Spatial Chain-of-Thought Reasoning
Sep 27, 2026Yang Cao, Jiaxin Zhang, Dave Zhenyu Chen +4Visual Spatial Reasoning Multi-View 3D Reconstruction
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · Harbin Institute of Technology · Huawei Noah’s Ark Lab
Autoregressive Mosaics: Probing 2D Spatial Reasoning in Text-Only Language Models
Aug 31, 2026Ashwin Nedungadi, Stefan Oehmcke, Stefan LüdtkeSpatial Reasoning Benchmarks Spatial Reasoning in Language Models
Institute for Visual & Analytic Computing (VAC), University of Rostock
Grounding Isn't Knowing: Do VLMs Need Object Localization for Spatial Reasoning?
Aug 24, 2026Xiwei Liu, Yulong Li, Xinlin Zhuang +5Visual Spatial Reasoning Spatial Reasoning in Language Models
Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence · The Chinese University of Hong Kong · University Of Liverpool
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
MultiGlobeQA: A Multilingual and Globally Diverse Benchmark for Geospatial Reasoning
Aug 4, 2026Martin Böckling, Elizaveta Nosova, Heiko Paulheim +1Spatial Reasoning Multilingual QA
Data and Web Science Group, University of Mannheim, Germany
SpatioLM: Towards General Physical Spatial Intelligence in Vision-Language Models
Aug 3, 2026Jing Wu, Jianhua Wu, Jiayi Guan +5Vision-Language Models Visual Spatial Reasoning
Xiaomi EV, Beijing, China · College of Automotive and Energy Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China · Independent Researcher
Spatial-IQ: Deconstructing Spatial Intelligence via Hierarchical Capability Tests
Jul 24, 2026Patrick Rim, Tom Long, Ekta Prashnani +63D Spatial Reasoning Visual Spatial Reasoning
1NVIDIA Research · 2Yale University
Spatial Reasoning in LLM Game Agents: Impact of Causal Context and Multi-Step Planning
Jul 22, 2026Mohit Jiwatode, Ronja Fuchs, Robin Schmöcker +2Game-Playing Agents Spatial Reasoning in Language Models
Institute for Information Processing · SDU Metaverse Lab
LenGuard-GPC: Length Guarding with Guided-Prompt Consistency for Spatial Reasoning Reinforce Learning
Jul 19, 2026Xingjian Tao, Yiwei Wang, Yujun Cai +1Visual Spatial Reasoning Reward Shaping
HKUST(GZ) · UC Merced · University of Queensland +1
Evaluation of Multilingual Ability to Use Spatial Deictic Expressions in Vision-Language Models
Jul 8, 2026Kaito Watanabe, Taisei Yamamoto, Tomoki Doi +1Visual Spatial Reasoning Multilingual VLM Evaluation
The University of Tokyo · Riken · Tohoku University
Spatial Reasoning via Modality Switching Between Language and Symbolic Representations
Jun 30, 2026Shreya Rajpal, Tanawan Premsri, Parisa KordjamshidiMultimodal Reasoning Spatial Reasoning
Department of Computer Science and Engineering Michigan State University Michigan, USA
Graph-Enhanced Large Language Models for Spatial Search
Jun 22, 2026Nicole R. Schneider, Kent O'Sullivan, Hanan SametLLM Reasoning with Graphs Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation
University of Maryland College Park, USA · University of Sydney Sydney, Australia
CoCoSI: Collaborative Cognitive Map Construction for Spatial Intelligence
Jun 9, 2026Yiming Zhang, Ruoxuan Cao, Zhihang ZhongMultimodal Understanding Multimodal Large Language Models
2Cornell University · 1Shanghai Jiao Tong University
From Symbolic to Geometric: Enabling Spatial Reasoning in Large Language Models
Jun 3, 2026Chen Chu, Bita Azarijoo, Li Xiong +2Spatial Reasoning Benchmarks Multimodal Large Language Models
University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA, USA · Emory University Atlanta, GA, USA · Novateur Research Solutions Ashburn, Virginia, USA
Imaginative Perception Tokens Enhance Spatial Reasoning in Multimodal Language Models
Jun 2, 2026Mahtab Bigverdi, Linjie Li, Weikai Huang +8Multimodal Understanding Spatial Reasoning
University of Washington · 2Allen Institute for AI · 3Microsoft +1
The Sword, Shield, and Achilles' Heel: Characterizing the Linguistic Inductive Bias of Large Language Models for Spatial Reasoning in Navigation Planning
May 29, 2026Xudong Zhang, Jian Yang, Shengkai Wang +5Spatial Reasoning in Language Models Large Language Model-Based Robot Planning
1East China Normal University, China · 2Information Engineering University, China · 3Zhengzhou University, China
Grounded 3D-Aware Spatial Vision-Language Modeling
May 28, 2026An-Chieh Cheng, Yang Fu, Yatai Ji +12Visually Grounded Reasoning 3D Spatial Reasoning
UCSD · NVIDIA · MIT
Do LLMs Build World Models From Text? A Multilingual Diagnostic of Spatial Reasoning
May 27, 2026Zhikai Pan, Chih-Ting Liao, Chunrui Liu +5LLM World Models Multilingual Language Model Evaluation
University of New South Wales · Essential Energy · University of Alabama at Birmingham +3
Exploring Geographic Relative Space in Large Language Models through Activation Patching
May 14, 2026Stef De Sabbata, Rahul Baiju, Stefano Mizzaro +1Spatial Reasoning in Language Models LLM Interpretability
School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, University of Leicester, UK · Department of Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics, University of Udine, Italy

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GeoReason: Bridging Logical Reasoning and Spatial Fidelity in Remote Sensing Segmentation

Cheng Fan, Han Wu, Tingzhang Luo, Minjing Dong+2

City University of Hong Kong · School of Computer Science, Peking University · Samsung

Reasoning Segmentation Remote Sensing Image Segmentation Remote Sensing VLMs Spatial Reasoning in Language Models

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Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have significantly advanced instruction-driven perception through the "Embedding-as-Mask" paradigm. However, extending this capability to Remote Sensing (RS) reasoning segmentation remains exceptionally challenging under cluttered geographical contexts and extreme scale variations, often leading to Spatial Fidelity Degradation and Target Misidentification. We identify a critical yet underexplored bottleneck: the sequential alienation of the segmentation token [SEG] from its initial visual grounding within the autoregressive generation paradigm. Produced only at the end of long reasoning chains, [SEG] relies on visual evidence that has been progressively diluted by linguistic abstraction and autoregressive noise. This information decay is particularly catastrophic for RS targets with minuscule pixel footprints, where even marginal fidelity loss leads to localization failure. To address these bottlenecks, we propose GeoReason, a novel framework designed to fortify logical deduction and preserve spatial integrity. First, we introduce an Anticipatory Prior mechanism that injects the [SEG] token directly into the initial user query, shifting it from a terminal output to a primary condition. This paradigm shift transforms the token into a persistent spatial anchor, preventing information decay during long-form linguistic inference. Second, we enhance visual reasoning via a Location-aware Chain-of-Thought (CoT) that enforces coarse-to-fine localization using bounding boxes, coupled with a Latent Patch-to-Token Alignment (PTA) Loss that explicitly aligns the latent segmentation token with physical RS textures. Extensive experiments demonstrate that GeoReason consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods on the Earthreason and RRSIS-D benchmarks. Code is available at https://github.com/Fanc0126/GeoReason.