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
1d ago

Your Language Model is Its Own Critic: Reinforcement Learning with Value Estimation from Actor's Internal States

The paper introduces POISE, a reinforcement learning algorithm that uses a model’s internal states as a value estimator to reduce variance in reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR). By employing a lightweight probe that reads internal signals during the forward pass, POISE predicts baselines online and uses a cross‑rollout construction to keep gradients unbiased. Experiments on Qwen3‑4B and OLMo3‑7B‑Instruct‑DPO across six domains show POISE outperforms existing RLVR baselines, offering more stable training and a value model that generalizes across tasks and scales with the policy.

By Yunho Choi, Jongwon Lim, Woojin Ahn, Minjae Oh, Jeonghoon Shim, Yohan Jo
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 9

ConSteer-RL: Steering Reasoning Capabilities in Large Language Models via Confidence-Aware Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2606. 08088v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement Learning from Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has recently become a key paradigm for improving the reasoning abilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), yet it remains limited by sparse binary rewards and its ignorance of model-internal uncertainty.

By Qing Miao, Yiming Zhao, Jing Yang, Chenxi Liu, Yuehai Chen, Yuewen Liu, Shaoyi Du, Badong Chen
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