mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Does Spatial Cognition Emerge in Frontier Models?

arXiv 2410.06468 ↗First posted 9 Oct 2024cs.AI cs.CV cs.LGcited by 66

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Cited by 35 in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models, but placed by its own abstract, which didn’t fit.

Abstract (arXiv)

Not yet. We present SPACE, a benchmark that systematically evaluates spatial cognition in frontier models. Our benchmark builds on decades of research in cognitive science. It evaluates large-scale mapping abilities that are brought to bear when an organism traverses physical environments, smaller-scale reasoning about object shapes and layouts, and cognitive infrastructure such as spatial attention and memory. For many tasks, we instantiate parallel presentations via text and images, allowing us to benchmark both large language models and large multimodal models. Results suggest that contemporary frontier models fall short of the spatial intelligence of animals, performing near chance level on a number of classic tests of animal cognition. Code and data are available: https://github.com/apple/ml-space-benchmark

Key facts. Cited by 66 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 9 Oct 2024.

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 2; 2025: 39; 2026: 25.

66 papers.

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  1. 2024Thinking in Space: How Multimodal Large Language Models See, Remember, and Recall Spacescited by 611
  2. 2025MMSI-Bench: A Benchmark for Multi-Image Spatial Intelligencecited by 183
  3. 2025Can MLLMs Reason in Multimodality? EMMA: An Enhanced MultiModal ReAsoning Benchmarkcited by 134
  4. 2025OmniSpatial: Towards Comprehensive Spatial Reasoning Benchmark for Vision Language Modelscited by 114
  5. 2025MM-Spatial: Exploring 3D Spatial Understanding in Multimodal LLMscited by 73
  6. 2025ZeroBench: An Impossible Visual Benchmark for Contemporary Large Multimodal Modelscited by 58
  7. 2025Multi-SpatialMLLM: Multi-Frame Spatial Understanding with Multi-Modal Large Language Modelscited by 52
  8. 2025How Far are VLMs from Visual Spatial Intelligence? A Benchmark-Driven Perspectivecited by 43
  9. 2024End-to-End Navigation with Vision Language Models: Transforming Spatial Reasoning into Question-Answeringcited by 37
  10. 2025UrbanVideo-Bench: Benchmarking Vision-Language Models on Embodied Intelligence with Video Data in Urban Spacescited by 36
  11. 2025VisuoThink: Empowering LVLM Reasoning with Multimodal Tree Searchcited by 36
  12. 2025SpatialBench: Benchmarking Multimodal Large Language Models for Spatial Cognitioncited by 35
38 more
  1. 2025Multimodal Spatial Reasoning in the Large Model Era: A Survey and Benchmarkscited by 33
  2. 2025SD-VLM: Spatial Measuring and Understanding with Depth-Encoded Vision-Language Modelscited by 25
  3. 2025SpaCE-10: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Models in Compositional Spatial Intelligencecited by 23
  4. 2025Scaling and Beyond: Advancing Spatial Reasoning in MLLMs Requires New Recipescited by 22
  5. 2025ShotBench: Expert-Level Cinematic Understanding in Vision-Language Modelscited by 22
  6. 2025Grounding Multimodal LLMs to Embodied Agents that Ask for Help with Reinforcement Learningcited by 21
  7. 2025Unfolding Spatial Cognition: Evaluating Multimodal Models on Visual Simulationscited by 21
  8. 2025Visual Structures Helps Visual Reasoning: Addressing the Binding Problem in VLMscited by 15
  9. 2025ENACT: Evaluating Embodied Cognition with World Modeling of Egocentric Interactioncited by 15
  10. 2025SpinBench: Perspective and Rotation as a Lens on Spatial Reasoning in VLMscited by 14
  11. 2025Human Cognitive Benchmarks Reveal Foundational Visual Gaps in MLLMscited by 13
  12. 2025FindingDory: A Benchmark to Evaluate Memory in Embodied Agentscited by 12
  13. 2025From Indoor to Open World: Revealing the Spatial Reasoning Gap in MLLMscited by 12
  14. 2026VisGym: Diverse, Customizable, Scalable Environments for Multimodal Agentscited by 11
  15. 2025Struct2D: A Perception-Guided Framework for Spatial Reasoning in MLLMscited by 10
  16. 2025SocialNav-SUB: Benchmarking VLMs for Scene Understanding in Social Robot Navigationcited by 10
  17. 2025RefineShot: Rethinking Cinematography Understanding with Foundational Skill Evaluationcited by 10
  18. 2025GenSpace: Benchmarking Spatially-Aware Image Generationcited by 9
  19. 2025From reactive to cognitive: brain-inspired spatial intelligence for embodied agentscited by 7
  20. 2026MentisOculi: Revealing the Limits of Reasoning with Mental Imagerycited by 7
  21. 2025DORAEMON: Decentralized Ontology-aware Reliable Agent with Enhanced Memory Oriented Navigationcited by 6
  22. 2025EgoDTM: Towards 3D-Aware Egocentric Video-Language Pretrainingcited by 5
  23. 2026Cambrian-P: Pose-Grounded Video Understandingcited by 5
  24. 2025PRISM-Bench: A Benchmark of Puzzle-Based Visual Tasks with CoT Error Detectioncited by 4
  25. 2026Towards Spatial Supersensing in the Wildcited by 4
  26. 2026VIEW2SPACE: Studying Multi-View Visual Reasoning from Sparse Observationscited by 3
  27. 2026Planning with the Viewscited by 3
  28. 2025The potential -- and the pitfalls -- of using pre-trained language models as cognitive science theoriescited by 2
  29. 2025GIQ: Benchmarking 3D Geometric Reasoning of Vision Foundation Models with Simulated and Real Polyhedracited by 2
  30. 2025Towards Physics-informed Spatial Intelligence with Human Priors: An Autonomous Driving Pilot Studycited by 2
  31. 2025MM-OPERA: Benchmarking Open-ended Association Reasoning for Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 2
  32. 2026AlloSpatial: Agentic Harness Framework for Spatial Reasoning in Foundation Modelscited by 2
  33. 2025Can LLMs Learn to Map the World from Local Descriptions?cited by 1
  34. 2025VideoAnchor: Reinforcing Subspace-Structured Visual Cues for Coherent Visual-Spatial Reasoningcited by 1
  35. 2025CoSPlan: Corrective Sequential Planning via Scene Graph Incremental Updatescited by 1
  36. 2026World2Mind: Cognition Toolkit for Allocentric Spatial Reasoning in Foundation Modelscited by 1
  37. 2026How Do LLMs and VLMs Understand Viewpoint Rotation Without Vision? An Interpretability Studycited by 1
  38. 2026From Where Things Are to What They Are For: Benchmarking Spatial-Functional Intelligence in Multimodal LLMscited by 1

50 most cited of 66 All 66 (JSON)

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  1. 2025A Survey of Large Language Model-Powered Spatial Intelligence Across Scales: Advances in Embodied Agents, Smart Cities, and Earth Science
  2. 2025Spatial Reasoning in Multimodal Large Language Models: A Survey of Tasks, Benchmarks and Methods
  3. 2026Spatial-IQ: Deconstructing Spatial Intelligence via Hierarchical Capability Tests
  4. 2025Defining and Evaluating Visual Language Models' Basic Spatial Abilities: A Perspective from Psychometrics
  5. 2026SpaceCast-Bench: Evaluating Predictive Spatial Reasoning in Vision-Language Models
  6. 202511Plus-Bench: Demystifying Multimodal LLM Spatial Reasoning with Cognitive-Inspired Analysis
  7. 2025SpatialViz-Bench: A Cognitively-Grounded Benchmark for Diagnosing Spatial Visualization in MLLMs
  8. 2025Spatial4D-Bench: A Versatile 4D Spatial Intelligence Benchmark