Micro-Macro Retrieval: Reducing Long-Form Hallucination in Large Language Models
On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation
Abstract (arXiv)
Large Language Models (LLMs) achieve impressive performance across many tasks but remain prone to hallucination, especially in long-form generation where redundant retrieved contexts and lengthy reasoning chains amplify factual errors. Recent studies highlight a critical phenomenon: the closer key information appears to the model outputs, the higher the factual accuracy. However, existing retrieval-augmented language models (RALMs) lack effective mechanisms to ensure this proximity - external evidence is injected into reasoning via multi-turn retrieval, but this cannot ensure key information stays close to the outputs. We propose Micro-Macro Retrieval (M2R), a novel retrieve-while-generate framework to fill this gap. At the macro level, M2R retrieves coarse-grained evidence from external sources; at the micro level, it extracts essential results from a key information repository built during reasoning and reuses them while generating answers. This design directly addresses the key-information-to-output proximity bottleneck, effectively reducing hallucination in long-form tasks. M2R is trained with a curriculum learning-based reinforcement learning strategy using customized rule-based rewards, enabling stable acquisition of retrieval and grounding skills. Extensive experiments across different benchmarks demonstrate the effectiveness of M2R, especially in lengthy-context settings.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 57 of its 66 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 Apr 2026.
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