arXiv Machine Learning By Weichu Xie, Haozhe Zhao, Wenpu Liu, Yongfu Zhu, Liang Chen, Minghao Ye, Zirong Chen, Yuqi Xu, Shuai Dong, Ziyue Wang, Xinbo Xu, Kean Shi, Ruoyu Wu, Xiaoying Zhang, Wenqi Shao, Baobao Chang, Nan Duan, Jiaqi Wang

Step-wise Rubric Rewards for LLM Reasoning

Read the original on arXiv Machine Learning →

The paper introduces Step-wise Rubrics as Rewards (SRaR), a reinforcement learning framework that assigns rubric-based scores to individual reasoning steps in large language models. By normalizing step scores and combining them with outcome rewards through a decoupled advantage estimator, SRaR preserves criterion-level structure and mitigates issues like rewarding flawed steps or encouraging endless self‑correction. Experiments on 16K problems and six math benchmarks show that SRaR outperforms prior rubric methods, improving accuracy, increasing faithful reasoning rates, and reducing self‑correction loops.

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