Reasoning models
arxiv arXiv cs.CL · 8d ago

Soft Prompting for Language Adherence in Multimodal LLMs

A soft prompting approach is proposed to improve language adherence in multimodal LLMs without strict output constraints. The method introduces a new metric to quantify language violations and evaluates three strategies: zero-shot prompting, supervised fine-tuning, and Chain-of-Thought reasoning. Results show effectiveness in reducing language violations while preserving ASR performance across multiple languages, with trade-offs considered under different compute constraints.

arxiv arXiv cs.CL · 8d ago

Visuals Lie, Consistency Speaks: Disentangling Spatial Attention from Reliability in Vision-Language Models

A study challenges the assumption that visual attention signals reliability in vision-language models. It finds near-zero correlation between spatial attention and accuracy, showing instead that self-consistency across reasoning paths is a stronger predictor of truth. Reliability is better explained by generation dynamics and internal state distributions, not visual attention patterns.

arxiv arXiv cs.CL · 8d ago

NarrativeWorldBench and N-VSSM for Long-Horizon Audio Drama

NarrativeWorldBench evaluates 21 LLMs on nine narrative-structure metrics across horizons of 10 to 200 episodes, with cross-lingual support in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Marathi. N-VSSM, a latent world model using Mamba-2, achieves plot-beat F1 of at least 0.84 across all horizons with 4x lower compute than closed-frontier models and outperforms Claude Opus 4.5 in long-arc consistency and controllability in a professional writer study.

arxiv arXiv cs.CL · 8d ago

MODE-RAG: Evaluating and Reducing Hallucinations in M-RAG

MODE-RAG proposes a multi-agent system using Variational Free Energy to dynamically gate interventions and reduce cross-modal hallucinations in retrieval-augmented generation. It integrates Monte Carlo Tree Search and logit perturbations to address causal fabrications and sycophancy, with dedicated agents ensuring factual verification and formatting stability. Evaluated via ModeVent, a subset of MultiVent, the system significantly improves robustness against logical fabrications.

arxiv arXiv cs.CL · 8d ago

AIPatient Arena: EHR-grounded evaluation of LLMs in clinical workflows

AIPatient Arena evaluates large language models in end-to-end clinical consultations using EHR-grounded patient-specific knowledge graphs. It assesses LLMs across eight clinical competence dimensions, revealing strong performance in interview skills, ethics, and explanation clarity, but persistent weaknesses in handling ambiguity, information coverage, and diagnostic reasoning, with process failures like repetitive questioning and omitted history.

arxiv arXiv cs.CL · 8d ago

Second-Order Bias in LLMs: Evaluating Judgment-Based Bias

A new study identifies second-order bias in large language models—social bias in their judgments about biased content. Using entitlement epistemology, the research develops a reasoning task to assess whether LLMs accept or reject biased texts based on demographics, revealing implicit biases that vary by target group and evade safety guardrails. The work introduces two metrics to quantify these biases and calls for more theoretically grounded evaluation methods in NLP.

arxiv arXiv cs.CL · 8d ago

LLMs Outperform Humans in Next Speaker Prediction

Large language models outperformed humans and supervised models in next speaker prediction using the AMI corpus, despite lacking audio-visual data and domain training. Multimodal LLMs surpassed text-based LLMs in addressee and turn-change detection but still fell short of human performance, highlighting challenges in utilizing raw audio-visual signals. Ablation studies show conversational context is crucial, especially for next speaker prediction, with both humans and LLMs struggling during frequent turn changes.

arxiv arXiv cs.CL · 8d ago

Expressivity Analysis of Hierarchical Modelling in Deep Transformers

This paper analyzes deep transformer expressiveness using bounded-depth grammars. It constructs transformers with positional attention where model depth scales linearly with grammar depth, and neuron count grows quadratically with production rules. The results support the linear representation hypothesis by showing these models can encode abstract grammatical states in low-dimensional, linearly separable subspaces.