MME-Reasoning: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Logical Reasoning in MLLMs
On the map: LLM reasoning → Multimodal reasoning
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Abstract (arXiv)
Logical reasoning is a fundamental aspect of human intelligence and an essential capability for multimodal large language models (MLLMs). Despite the significant advancement in multimodal reasoning, existing benchmarks fail to comprehensively evaluate their reasoning abilities due to the lack of explicit categorization for logical reasoning types and an unclear understanding of reasoning. To address these issues, we introduce MME-Reasoning, a comprehensive benchmark designed to evaluate the reasoning ability of MLLMs, which covers all three types of reasoning (i.e., inductive, deductive, and abductive) in its questions. We carefully curate the data to ensure that each question effectively evaluates reasoning ability rather than perceptual skills or knowledge breadth, and extend the evaluation protocols to cover the evaluation of diverse questions. Our evaluation reveals substantial limitations of state-of-the-art MLLMs when subjected to holistic assessments of logical reasoning capabilities. Even the most advanced MLLMs show limited performance in comprehensive logical reasoning, with notable performance imbalances across reasoning types. In addition, we conducted an in-depth analysis of approaches such as ``thinking mode'' and Rule-based RL, which are commonly believed to enhance reasoning abilities. These findings highlight the critical limitations and performance imbalances of current MLLMs in diverse logical reasoning scenarios, providing comprehensive and systematic insights into the understanding and evaluation of reasoning capabilities.
Key facts. Cited by 33 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 53 of its 74 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 May 2025.
Builds on
53 of 74 references.
Closest ancestors · 23
Same direction, newest first
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- 2023See, Think, Confirm: Interactive Prompting Between Vision and Language Models for Knowledge-based Visual Reasoning12 Jan
Other references · 30
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- 2024Qwen2 Technical Reportcited by 2,120
- 2025InternVL3: Exploring Advanced Training and Test-Time Recipes for Open-Source Multimodal Modelscited by 1,834
- 2023MME: A Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 1,652
- 2016CLEVR: A Diagnostic Dataset for Compositional Language and Elementary Visual Reasoningcited by 1,457
- 2024Video-MME: The First-Ever Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark of Multi-modal LLMs in Video Analysiscited by 1,413
- 2024OpenAI o1 System Cardcited by 1,244
- 2025Kimi k1.5: Scaling Reinforcement Learning with LLMscited by 1,210
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- 2024Thinking in Space: How Multimodal Large Language Models See, Remember, and Recall Spacescited by 611
- 2024MMMU-Pro: A More Robust Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding Benchmarkcited by 512
- 2021ARKitScenes: A Diverse Real-World Dataset For 3D Indoor Scene Understanding Using Mobile RGB-D Datacited by 454
- 2025Seed1.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 373
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- 2025R1-VL: Learning to Reason with Multimodal Large Language Models via Step-wise Group Relative Policy Optimizationcited by 301
- 2024Mulberry: Empowering MLLM with o1-like Reasoning and Reflection via Collective Monte Carlo Tree Searchcited by 175
- 2025Logical Reasoning in Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 55
- 2024AV-Odyssey Bench: Can Your Multimodal LLMs Really Understand Audio-Visual Information?cited by 47
- 2025MM-IQ: Benchmarking Human-Like Abstraction and Reasoning in Multimodal Modelscited by 29
- 2023Thinking Like an Expert:Multimodal Hypergraph-of-Thought (HoT) Reasoning to boost Foundation Modalscited by 24
- 2024GeoX: Geometric Problem Solving Through Unified Formalized Vision-Language Pre-trainingcited by 23
- 2025OmniCaptioner: One Captioner to Rule Them Allcited by 20
- 2024RapGuard: Safeguarding Multimodal Large Language Models via Rationale-aware Defensive Promptingcited by 19
- 2025PuzzleBench: A Fully Dynamic Evaluation Framework for Large Multimodal Models on Puzzle Solvingcited by 17
- 2024Chimera: Improving Generalist Model with Domain-Specific Expertscited by 11
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 14; 2026: 19.
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