When Models Judge Themselves: Unsupervised Self-Evolution for Multimodal Reasoning
On the map: LLM reasoning → Multimodal reasoning
Abstract (arXiv)
Recent progress in multimodal large language models has led to strong performance on reasoning tasks, but these improvements largely rely on high-quality annotated data or teacher-model distillation, both of which are costly and difficult to scale. To address this, we propose an unsupervised self-evolution training framework for multimodal reasoning that achieves stable performance improvements without using human-annotated answers or external reward models. For each input, we sample multiple reasoning trajectories and jointly model their within group structure. We use the Actor's self-consistency signal as a training prior, and introduce a bounded Judge based modulation to continuously reweight trajectories of different quality. We further model the modulated scores as a group level distribution and convert absolute scores into relative advantages within each group, enabling more robust policy updates. Trained with Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) on unlabeled data, our method consistently improves reasoning performance and generalization on five mathematical reasoning benchmarks, offering a scalable path toward self-evolving multimodal models. The code are available at https://github.com/OPPO-Mente-Lab/LLM-Self-Judge.
Key facts. Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 41 of its 55 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 22 Mar 2026.
Builds on
41 of 55 references.
Closest ancestors · 11
Same direction, newest first
- 2025MMR1: Enhancing Multimodal Reasoning with Variance-Aware Sampling and Open Resources25 Sep
- 2025ChartMuseum: Testing Visual Reasoning Capabilities of Large Vision-Language Models19 May
- 2025Perception, Reason, Think, and Plan: A Survey on Large Multimodal Reasoning Models8 May
- 2025VL-Rethinker: Incentivizing Self-Reflection of Vision-Language Models with Reinforcement Learning10 Apr
- 2025VLM-R1: A Stable and Generalizable R1-style Large Vision-Language Model10 Apr
- 2025R1-Onevision: Advancing Generalized Multimodal Reasoning through Cross-Modal Formalization13 Mar
- 2025Vision-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in Multimodal Large Language Models9 Mar
- 2024DynaMath: A Dynamic Visual Benchmark for Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning Robustness of Vision Language Models29 Oct
- 2024LogicVista: Multimodal LLM Logical Reasoning Benchmark in Visual Contexts6 Jul
- 2024We-Math: Does Your Large Multimodal Model Achieve Human-like Mathematical Reasoning?1 Jul
- 2024Measuring Multimodal Mathematical Reasoning with MATH-Vision Dataset22 Feb
Other references · 30
- 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 15,215
- 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 9,379
- 2023Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Modelcited by 8,065
- 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 6,330
- 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,587
- 2025DAPO: An Open-Source LLM Reinforcement Learning System at Scalecited by 2,810
- 2024Qwen2 Technical Reportcited by 2,120
- 2024HybridFlow: A Flexible and Efficient RLHF Frameworkcited by 2,057
- 2025InternVL3: Exploring Advanced Training and Test-Time Recipes for Open-Source Multimodal Modelscited by 1,834
- 2025Kimi k1.5: Scaling Reinforcement Learning with LLMscited by 1,210
- 2025Group Sequence Policy Optimizationcited by 835
- 2024MathVerse: Does Your Multi-modal LLM Truly See the Diagrams in Visual Math Problems?cited by 586
18 more
- 2021Inter-GPS: Interpretable Geometry Problem Solving with Formal Language and Symbolic Reasoningcited by 383
- 2025Absolute Zero: Reinforced Self-play Reasoning with Zero Datacited by 344
- 2025TTRL: Test-Time Reinforcement Learningcited by 275
- 2021GeoQA: A Geometric Question Answering Benchmark Towards Multimodal Numerical Reasoningcited by 228
- 2025R-Zero: Self-Evolving Reasoning LLM from Zero Datacited by 228
- 2025Learning to Reason without External Rewardscited by 210
- 2025NaturalReasoning: Reasoning in the Wild with 2.8M Challenging Questionscited by 84
- 2025Can Large Reasoning Models Self-Train?cited by 68
- 2025Self-Questioning Language Modelscited by 50
- 2025Evolving Language Models without Labels: Majority Drives Selection, Novelty Promotes Variationcited by 45
- 2025No Free Lunch: Rethinking Internal Feedback for LLM Reasoningcited by 37
- 2025Vision-Zero: Scalable VLM Self-Improvement via Strategic Gamified Self-Playcited by 37
- 2025ETTRL: Balancing Exploration and Exploitation in LLM Test-Time Reinforcement Learning Via Entropy Mechanismcited by 36
- 2025LLaVA-Critic-R1: Your Critic Model is Secretly a Strong Policy Modelcited by 35
- 2025NaturalThoughts: Selecting and Distilling Reasoning Traces for General Reasoning Taskscited by 32
- 2025Seeing Beyond the Scene: Enhancing Vision-Language Models with Interactional Reasoningcited by 4
- 2025Limited Preference Data? Learning Better Reward Model with Latent Space Synthesiscited by 2
- 2025DuoTeach: Dual Role Self-Teaching for Coarse-to-Fine Decision Coordination in Vision--Language Modelscited by 1
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 5.
5 papers.
- 2026Learning to Search: A Decision-Based Agent for Knowledge-Based Visual Question Answeringcited by 2
- 2026Perception Before Supervision: Self-Contained Visual Distillation from Counterfactual Blind Spotscited by 2
- 2026DART-SD: Diamond-topology Aware Retrieval and Tuning for Self-Distillation of Multi-Turn Tool-Calling Agentscited by 2
- 2026Program-Verified Self-Evolution for Vision-Language Modelscited by 0
- 2026ReDiS: Reasoning-Diagnosis Self-Evolution for Multimodal Reasoning in Remote Sensingcited by 0
- 2026ReDiS: Reasoning-Diagnosis Self-Evolution for Multimodal Reasoning in Remote Sensing13 Oct 2026
- 2026Program-Verified Self-Evolution for Vision-Language Models27 Sep 2026
- 2026DART-SD: Diamond-topology Aware Retrieval and Tuning for Self-Distillation of Multi-Turn Tool-Calling Agents19 Aug 2026
- 2026Perception Before Supervision: Self-Contained Visual Distillation from Counterfactual Blind Spots10 Aug 2026
- 2026Learning to Search: A Decision-Based Agent for Knowledge-Based Visual Question Answering8 Apr 2026
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- 2026iReasoner: Trajectory-Aware Intrinsic Reasoning Supervision for Self-Evolving Large Multimodal Models
- 2025SyncLoop: A Multimodal Dual-Loop Framework for Self-Improving Mathematical Reasoning
- 2026Eliciting Self-Verification in Multimodal Reasoning Agents with Reinforcement Learning
- 2025Advancing Multimodal Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning with Cold Start
- 2026RISE: Reliable Improvement in Self-Evolving Vision-Language Models
- 2026On the Generalization Gap in Self-Evolving Language Model Reasoning