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The paper investigates why multimodal large language models (MLLMs) struggle with vision‑centric tasks when visual evidence conflicts with pretrained language knowledge. Using image reconstruction and a new WhatIfVis benchmark, the authors show that MLLMs preserve coarse‑grained visual attributes but fail to consistently use them, and that supervised fine‑tuning and activation patching can improve controllability of visual context sensitivity. The study demonstrates that the main bottleneck lies in the models’ inability to reliably regulate their reliance on visual evidence rather than in visual perception itself.
arXiv:2606. 11719v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Spatial reasoning remains a persistent challenge for multimodal large language models (MLLMs).
arXiv:2607. 22864v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) excel at visual interpretation but fail on spatial reasoning tasks that humans solve reliably.
arXiv:2605.12413v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) show strong visual perception, yet remain limited in reasoning about space under changing viewpoints. We s...
arXiv:2606. 03988v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Vision language models (VLMs) excel at many tasks but still struggle with spatial reasoning when critical information is not directly observable.
arXiv:2510.13394v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Spatial reasoning ability is crucial for Vision Language Models (VLMs) to support real-world applications in diverse domains including robotics, au...