Boosting Process-Correct CoT Reasoning by Modeling Solvability of Multiple-Choice QA

ICLR 2026 Conference Submission18377 Authors

Keywords: LLM, Reasoning, CoT, Interpretability, RL, Multimodal, MCQA

Abstract: Reasoning quality in large language models depends not only on producing correct answers but also on generating valid intermediate steps. We study this through multiple-choice question answering (MCQA), which provides a controlled setting with fixed answer options. Our analysis shows that when questions are effectively unsolvable for a model, spurious chains of thought (CoTs) are more likely to appear, leading to false positives. By estimating the solvability of each question, we uncover an intermediate regime where learning is most effective. Building on this insight, we adapt outcome-supervised reward models and reinforcement learning with group-relative advantage to incorporate solvability into their objectives. Across experiments on math and multimodal datasets, these modifications consistently yield higher rates of process-correct reasoning and, in reinforcement learning, improved answer accuracy as well. Our results highlight solvability as a key factor for reducing hallucinations and increasing reliability in CoT reasoning.

Primary Area: interpretability and explainable AI

Submission Number: 18377