# Seeing Culture: A Benchmark for Visual Reasoning and Grounding

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16517 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16517/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Multimodal reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 11 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Sep 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Multimodal reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/multimodal-reasoning/)
- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [VLM benchmarks and visual reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/vlm-benchmarks-and-visual-reasoning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [Qwen2.5 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15115/) (2024)
- [Expanding Performance Boundaries of Open-Source Multimodal Models with Model, Data, and Test-Time Scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05271/) (2024)
- [MiniCPM-V: A GPT-4V Level MLLM on Your Phone](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01800/) (2024)
- [MTVQA: Benchmarking Multilingual Text-Centric Visual Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.11985/) (2024)
- [CultureVLM: Characterizing and Improving Cultural Understanding of Vision-Language Models for over 100 Countries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01282/) (2025)
- [Evaluating Visual and Cultural Interpretation: The K-Viscuit Benchmark with Human-VLM Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.16469/) (2024)
- [GIMMICK -- Globally Inclusive Multimodal Multitask Cultural Knowledge Benchmarking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13766/) (2025)
- [Crowdsource, Crawl, or Generate? Creating SEA-VL, a Multicultural Vision-Language Dataset for Southeast Asia](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07920/) (2025)
- [When Cultures Meet: Multicultural Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.15972/) (2025)
- [Exploiting Semantic Role Contextualized Video Features for Multi-Instance Text-Video Retrieval EPIC-KITCHENS-100 Multi-Instance Retrieval Challenge 2022](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.14381/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Tears or Cheers? Benchmarking LLMs via Culturally Elicited Distinct Affective Responses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.13024/) (2026)
- [BLEnD-Vis: Benchmarking Multimodal Cultural Understanding in Vision Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.11178/) (2025)
- [Vision Language Models are Confused Tourists](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.17004/) (2025)
- [EgoGroups: A Benchmark For Detecting Social Groups of People in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.22249/) (2026)
- [FashionStylist: An Expert Knowledge-enhanced Multimodal Dataset for Fashion Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.09249/) (2026)
- [SEA-NLI: Natural Language Inference as a Lens into Southeast Asian Cultural Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.03284/) (2026)
- [AesCanvas: A Large-Scale Dataset and Benchmark for Aesthetic Critique and Contextual Suitability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.26713/) (2026)
- [CultureMINE: Datasets and Methods for Improving the Cultural Capabilities of NLP Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.22494/) (2026)
- [Tanawpamana: Benchmarking Vision-Language Models on Philippine Cultural Heritage Sites](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17596/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Multimodal vision-language models (VLMs) have made substantial progress in various tasks that require a combined understanding of visual and textual content, particularly in cultural understanding tasks, with the emergence of new cultural datasets. However, these datasets frequently fall short of providing cultural reasoning while underrepresenting many cultures. In this paper, we introduce the Seeing Culture Benchmark (SCB), focusing on cultural reasoning with a novel approach that requires VLMs to reason on culturally rich images in two stages: i) selecting the correct visual option with multiple-choice visual question answering (VQA), and ii) segmenting the relevant cultural artifact as evidence of reasoning. Visual options in the first stage are systematically organized into three types: those originating from the same country, those from different countries, or a mixed group. Notably, all options are derived from a singular category for each type. Progression to the second stage occurs only after a correct visual option is chosen. The SCB benchmark comprises 1,065 images that capture 138 cultural artifacts across five categories from seven Southeast Asia countries, whose diverse cultures are often overlooked, accompanied by 3,178 questions, of which 1,093 are unique and meticulously curated by human annotators. Our evaluation of various VLMs reveals the complexities involved in cross-modal cultural reasoning and highlights the disparity between visual reasoning and spatial grounding in culturally nuanced scenarios. The SCB serves as a crucial benchmark for identifying these shortcomings, thereby guiding future developments in the field of cultural reasoning. https://github.com/buraksatar/SeeingCulture