Decomposing Extrapolative Problem Solving: Spatial Transfer and Length Scaling with Map Worlds

ICLR 2026 Conference Submission18588 Authors

Keywords: Compositional generalization, problem solving

Abstract: Someone who learns to walk shortest paths in New York can, upon receiving a map of Paris, immediately apply the same rule to navigate, despite never practicing there. This ability to recombine known rules to solve novel problems exemplifies compositional generalization (CG), a hallmark of human cognition. Yet our understanding of what drives the success or failure of such extrapolative problem solving, particularly the roles of training data properties and optimization paradigms, remains limited. In this work, we introduce a controlled map-navigation testbed that cleanly separates two dimensions of CG: ***spatial transfer*** (systematicity across environments) and ***length scaling*** (productivity along problem difficulty). Through quantitative experiments, we show that transfer is enabled by sufficient distinct questions with high coverage and modest diversity, while scaling critically depends on exposure to neighboring-but-longer examples. Finally, we find that reinforcement learning (RL) stabilizes optimization but does not surpass the ceiling set by supervised fine-tuning (SFT). Together, these results provide principled insights into how data properties and training paradigms shape extrapolative problem solving.

Primary Area: alignment, fairness, safety, privacy, and societal considerations

Submission Number: 18588