# Can Large Reasoning Models do Analogical Reasoning under Perceptual Uncertainty?

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.11207 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11207/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 45 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Mar 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/lr/reasoning-benchmarks-and-evaluation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 45)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03300/) (2024)
- [DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12948/) (2025)
- [Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11171/) (2022)
- [Solving Quantitative Reasoning Problems with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.14858/) (2022)
- [GSM-Symbolic: Understanding the Limitations of Mathematical Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05229/) (2024)
- [Improve Mathematical Reasoning in Language Models by Automated Process Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06592/) (2024)
- [ReST-MCTS*: LLM Self-Training via Process Reward Guided Tree Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.03816/) (2024)
- [Towards Large Reasoning Models: A Survey of Reinforced Reasoning with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.09686/) (2025)
- [Reasoning or Reciting? Exploring the Capabilities and Limitations of Language Models Through Counterfactual Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.02477/) (2023)
- [Emergent Analogical Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09196/) (2022)
- [RAVEN: A Dataset for Relational and Analogical Visual rEasoNing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.02741/) (2019)
- [Measuring abstract reasoning in neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.04225/) (2018)
- [Abstraction and Analogy-Making in Artificial Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.10717/) (2021)
- [The ConceptARC Benchmark: Evaluating Understanding and Generalization in the ARC Domain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.07141/) (2023)
- [Stratified Rule-Aware Network for Abstract Visual Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.06838/) (2020)
- [A Neuro-vector-symbolic Architecture for Solving Raven's Progressive Matrices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04571/) (2022)
- [Comparing Humans, GPT-4, and GPT-4V On Abstraction and Reasoning Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09247/) (2023)
- [Large Language Models Are Not Strong Abstract Reasoners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19555/) (2023)
- [The Scattering Compositional Learner: Discovering Objects, Attributes, Relationships in Analogical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.04212/) (2020)
- [Scale-Localized Abstract Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09405/) (2020)
- [Abstract Spatial-Temporal Reasoning via Probabilistic Abduction and Execution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14230/) (2021)
- [Data Contamination Through the Lens of Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10628/) (2023)
- [Deep Learning Methods for Abstract Visual Reasoning: A Survey on Raven's Progressive Matrices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12382/) (2022)
- [Evaluating the Robustness of Analogical Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14215/) (2024)
- [MARVEL: Multidimensional Abstraction and Reasoning through Visual Evaluation and Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13591/) (2024)
- [What is the Visual Cognition Gap between Humans and Multimodal LLMs?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10424/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Trade-offs in Large Reasoning Models: An Empirical Analysis of Deliberative and Adaptive Reasoning over Foundational Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17979/) (2025)
- [A Comment On "The Illusion of Thinking": Reframing the Reasoning Cliff as an Agentic Gap](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.18957/) (2025)
- [I-RAVEN-X: Benchmarking Generalization and Robustness of Analogical and Mathematical Reasoning in Large Language and Reasoning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.17496/) (2025)
- [Evaluating Relational Reasoning in LLMs with REL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.12176/) (2026)
- [VisAnalog: A Diagnostic Suite for Visual Concept Transfer on Natural Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.23141/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This work presents a first evaluation of two state-of-the-art Large Reasoning Models (LRMs), OpenAI's o3-mini and DeepSeek R1, on analogical reasoning, focusing on well-established nonverbal human IQ tests based on Raven's progressive matrices. We benchmark with the I-RAVEN dataset and its extension, I-RAVEN-X, which tests the ability to generalize to longer reasoning rules and ranges of the attribute values. To assess the influence of visual uncertainties on these symbolic analogical reasoning tests, we extend the I-RAVEN-X dataset, which otherwise assumes an oracle perception. We adopt a two-fold strategy to simulate this imperfect visual perception: 1) we introduce confounding attributes which, being sampled at random, do not contribute to the prediction of the correct answer of the puzzles, and 2) we smoothen the distributions of the input attributes' values. We observe a sharp decline in OpenAI's o3-mini task accuracy, dropping from 86.6% on the original I-RAVEN to just 17.0% -- approaching random chance -- on the more challenging I-RAVEN-X, which increases input length and range and emulates perceptual uncertainty. This drop occurred despite spending 3.4x more reasoning tokens. A similar trend is also observed for DeepSeek R1: from 80.6% to 23.2%. On the other hand, a neuro-symbolic probabilistic abductive model, ARLC, that achieves state-of-the-art performances on I-RAVEN, can robustly reason under all these out-of-distribution tests, maintaining strong accuracy with only a modest accuracy reduction from 98.6% to 88.0%. Our code is available at https://github.com/IBM/raven-large-language-models.