Look Again, Think Slowly: Enhancing Visual Reflection in Vision-Language Models

ACL ARR 2025 May Submission4054 Authors

Abstract: Recent advances in text-only “slow-thinking” reasoning have prompted efforts to transfer this capability to vision-language models (VLMs), for training visual reasoning models (VRMs). However, such transfer faces critical challenges: Effective "slow thinking" in VRMs requires visual reflection, the ability to check the reasoning process based on visual information. Through quantitative analysis, we observe that current VRMs exhibit limited visual reflection, as their attention to visual information diminishes rapidly with longer generated responses. To address this challenge, we propose a new VRM Reflection-V, which enhances visual reflection based on reasoning data construction for cold-start and reward design for reinforcement learning (RL). Firstly, we construct vision-centered reasoning data by leveraging an agent that interacts between VLMs and reasoning LLMs, enabling cold-start learning of visual reflection patterns. Secondly, a visual attention based reward model is employed during RL to encourage reasoning based on visual information. Therefore, Reflection-V demonstrates significant improvements across multiple visual reasoning benchmarks. Furthermore, Reflection-V maintains a stronger and more consistent reliance on visual information during visual reasoning, indicating effective enhancement in visual reflection capabilities.

Paper Type: Long

Research Area: Multimodality and Language Grounding to Vision, Robotics and Beyond

Research Area Keywords: multimodality, vision question answering, reasoning

Contribution Types: NLP engineering experiment

Languages Studied: English

Keywords: multimodality, vision question answering, reasoning

Submission Number: 4054