arXiv Computation and Language

Boosting LLM Exploration via Weak-Model Guidance in RLVR

The paper introduces a method to enhance large language model (LLM) exploration in Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) by guiding the target model with partial reasoning trajectories from smaller, weaker language models. This weak-model guidance disrupts over‑confidence, preserves generative diversity, and mitigates entropy collapse without extra fine‑tuning or complex reward designs. Experiments on mathematical benchmarks show consistent improvements over vanilla RLVR, especially as the number of allowed attempts ($k$) increases, indicating broader reasoning coverage.

arXiv AI
Sep 10

Boosting LLM Reasoning via Human-Inspired Reward Shaping

The paper introduces T2T (Thickening-to-Thinning), a dynamic reward framework for large language models that mimics human learning by separating exploration and consolidation phases. During incorrect attempts, T2T encourages exploration to broaden the search space, while after correct solutions it applies length penalties to promote concise reasoning. Experiments on mathematical benchmarks across five mainstream LLMs show that T2T outperforms standard GRPO and recent baselines, improving overall reasoning performance.

By Wenze Lin, Zhen Yang, Xitai Jiang, Xiaoteng Ma, Gao Huang
arXiv AI
Sep 10

Difficulty-Adaptive Tree-Structured Policy Optimization for Expanding Reasoning Coverage in RLVR

The paper introduces DATPO, a Difficulty‑Adaptive Sentence‑entropy‑guided Tree‑structured Policy Optimization method designed to improve reasoning coverage in Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR). It builds on three design principles: adaptive difficulty rollouts, tree‑based rollouts, and sentence‑entropy‑guided forking to enhance semantic diversity. Experiments on mathematical reasoning benchmarks show that DATPO outperforms existing baselines, particularly in pass@k, leading to better test‑time scaling performance.

By Youngjun Yu, Sanghwan Jang, Hwanjo Yu
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 25

ExTra: Exploratory Trajectory Optimization for Language Model Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2606. 24994v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) for language-model reasoning can fail at both extremes of task difficulty: easy prompts often produce all-correct, low-diversity rollout groups with little gradient signal, while hard prompts can produce all-incorrect groups with no positive reward.

By Wenyang Hu, Junxiang Jia, Zhen Shu, Daniel Dahlmeier, See-Kiong Ng, Bryan Kian Hsiang Low
arXiv AI
Jul 2

Selective Expert Guidance for Effective and Diverse Exploration in Reinforcement Learning of LLMs

arXiv:2510. 04140v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has become a widely adopted technique for enhancing the reasoning ability of Large Language Models (LLMs).

By Zishang Jiang, Jinyi Han, Tingyun Li, Xinyi Wang, Sihang Jiang, Jiaqing Liang, Zhaoqian Dai, Shuguang Ma, Fei Yu, Yanghua Xiao
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jul 30

LEEPS: Latent-Guided Explore-Exploit Prompt Sampling for Efficient RLVR in Large Language Models

Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) improves the reasoning capabilities of large language models, but prompt groups with identical rollout rewards consume generation budget without effective learning signals. Pre-rollout prompt selection can reduce this waste by screening prompts before rollout generation.