Can Vision-Language Models be a Good Guesser? Exploring VLMs for Times and Location Reasoning
On the map: LLM reasoning → Spatial and embodied reasoning
Abstract (arXiv)
Vision-Language Models (VLMs) are expected to be capable of reasoning with commonsense knowledge as human beings. One example is that humans can reason where and when an image is taken based on their knowledge. This makes us wonder if, based on visual cues, Vision-Language Models that are pre-trained with large-scale image-text resources can achieve and even outperform human's capability in reasoning times and location. To address this question, we propose a two-stage recognitionspace and reasoningspace probing task, applied to discriminative and generative VLMs to uncover whether VLMs can recognize times and location-relevant features and further reason about it. To facilitate the investigation, we introduce WikiTiLo, a well-curated image dataset compromising images with rich socio-cultural cues. In the extensive experimental studies, we find that although VLMs can effectively retain relevant features in visual encoders, they still fail to make perfect reasoning. We will release our dataset and codes to facilitate future studies.
Key facts. Cited by 22 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Spatial and embodied reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 33 of its 46 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 Jul 2023.
Builds on
33 of 46 references.
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- 2025Toward Reliable VLM: A Fine-Grained Benchmark and Framework for Exposure, Bias, and Inference in Korean Street Views3 Jun 2025
- 2025ToDRE: Effective Visual Token Pruning via Token Diversity and Task Relevance24 May 2025
- 2025NAVIG: Natural Language-guided Analysis with Vision Language Models for Image Geo-localization20 Feb 2025
- 2025Evaluating Precise Geolocation Inference Capabilities of Vision Language Models20 Feb 2025
- 2024Constructive Apraxia: An Unexpected Limit of Instructible Vision-Language Models and Analog for Human Cognitive Disorders17 Sep 2024
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