arXiv AI By Xin Yu, Liuchen Liao, Yiwen Zhang, Yingchen Yu, Lingzhou Xue, Qinzhen Guo

Preference-Based Self-Distillation: Beyond KL Matching via Reward Regularization

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The paper introduces Preference‑Based Self‑Distillation (PBSD), a new on‑policy self‑distillation method that replaces traditional KL matching with a reward‑regularized objective. PBSD derives a reward‑reweighted teacher distribution, optimizing preference gaps between teacher and student samples while keeping on‑policy sampling. Experiments on mathematical reasoning and tool‑use tasks show PBSD achieves stronger average performance, improved training stability, and maintains token efficiency compared to prior self‑distillation baselines.

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