{"id":1185827,"date":"2026-09-10T09:38:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T16:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/publication\/learning-where-outcomes-change-credit-addressable-reasoning-for-multimodal-geometry\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T14:06:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T21:06:29","slug":"learning-where-outcomes-change-credit-addressable-reasoning-for-multimodal-geometry","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/publication\/learning-where-outcomes-change-credit-addressable-reasoning-for-multimodal-geometry\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning Where Outcomes Change:Credit-Addressable Reasoning for Multimodal Geometry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Multimodal geometry reasoning requires VLMs to extract precise visual relations and preserve them through multi-step deduction. Existing free-form traces obscure the decisions that determine the answer, and trajectory-level reinforcement learning distributes a single terminal signal across the entire response. We introduce credit-addressable reasoning, in which the semantic units exposed during inference also define where learning compares alternatives and assigns credit. We instantiate this principle with Code-CoT, which retains the diagram, represents visual relations as line-addressable executable code, and organizes reasoning into typed events, and CE-GRPO, which selects event boundaries using structural priors and type-normalized entropy, samples complete continuations from shared prefixes, and converts outcome differences into localized advantages. Across nine geometry benchmarks, CE-GRPO achieves an average accuracy of 76.04, outperforming Qwen3-VL-8B and trajectory-level GRPO by <math><mn>8.09<\/mn><\/math> and 3.43 points, respectively. Its relative advantage increases with the number of intermediate events, demonstrating the value of representation&#8211;optimization co-design for long, dependency-heavy multimodal reasoning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Multimodal geometry reasoning requires VLMs to extract precise visual relations and preserve them through multi-step deduction. Existing free-form traces obscure the decisions that determine the answer, and trajectory-level reinforcement learning distributes a single terminal signal across the entire response. We introduce credit-addressable reasoning, in which the semantic units exposed during inference also define where learning [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"text","value":"Jia-Ni Guo","user_id":0},{"type":"text","value":"Junjie Wang","user_id":0},{"type":"text","value":"Jie Wu","user_id":0},{"type":"text","value":"Peng-Xiang Zhao","user_id":0},{"type":"text","value":"Dong-Dong Zhang","user_id":0},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Shaohan Huang","user_id":"39709"},{"type":"text","value":"Yujiu Yang","user_id":0},{"type":"text","value":"Fu-Ru Wei","user_id":0}],"msr_publishername":"","msr_publisher_other":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_edition":"","msr_editors":"","msr_how_published":"arXiv","msr_isbn":"","msr_issue":"","msr_journal":"","msr_number":"","msr_organization":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_page_range_start":"","msr_page_range_end":"","msr_series":"","msr_volume":"","msr_copyright":"","msr_conference_name":"","msr_doi":"","msr_arxiv_id":"2608.30457","msr_mag_id":"","msr_other_authors":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_award":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_institution":"","msr_host":"","msr_version":"","msr_duration":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_highlight_type":"","msr_date_display_format":"","msr_main_download_label":"","msr_external_link_label":"","msr_doi_label":"","msr_published_date":"2026-08-31","msr_startdate":"","msr_presentation_date":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_notes":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_conference_url":"","msr_journal_url":"","msr_year":2026,"msr_month":8,"msr_day":31,"msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":false,"msr_pub_id":"cc8d34c989c7116ec125d1e4ffc8ca51ebb63bea","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"url","title":"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2608.30457","label_id":243109,"id":false,"viewUrl":false}],"msr_related_uploader":[],"msr_original_fields_of_study":[],"msr_s2_paper_id":"cc8d34c989c7116ec125d1e4ffc8ca51ebb63bea","msr_s2_pdf_url":"","msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_citation_count":0,"msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":39,"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_pub_ids":[{"provider":"s2","id":"cc8d34c989c7116ec125d1e4ffc8ca51ebb63bea"},{"provider":"arxiv","id":"2608.30457"},{"provider":"corpusid","id":"291541845"}],"msr_hide_image_in_river":0,"footnotes":""},"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13556,13562],"msr-publication-type":[270373],"msr-publisher":[],"msr-publication-cta":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[246691,265497,246820],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-1185827","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-artificial-intelligence","msr-research-area-computer-vision","msr-locale-en_us","msr-field-of-study-computer-science","msr-field-of-study-machine-learning-296","msr-field-of-study-reinforcement-learning"],"msr_publishername":"","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2026-08-31","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"arXiv","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":0,"msr_main_download":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"url","title":"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2608.30457","label_id":243109,"id":false,"viewUrl":false}],"msr_related_uploader":[],"msr_citation_count":0,"msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"cc8d34c989c7116ec125d1e4ffc8ca51ebb63bea","msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":39,"msr_arxiv_id":"2608.30457","msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_pdf_url":null,"msr_attachments":[],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"text","value":"Jia-Ni Guo","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Junjie Wang","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Jie Wu","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Peng-Xiang Zhao","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Dong-Dong Zhang","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Shaohan Huang","user_id":39709,"rest_url":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Shaohan Huang"},{"type":"text","value":"Yujiu Yang","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Fu-Ru Wei","user_id":0,"rest_url":false}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[],"msr_project":[],"publication":[],"video":[],"msr-tool":[],"msr_publication_type":"misc","related_content":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/1185827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-research-item"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/1185827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1188018,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/1185827\/revisions\/1188018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1185827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-research-highlight","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-highlight?post=1185827"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=1185827"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publication-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publication-type?post=1185827"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publisher?post=1185827"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publication-cta","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publication-cta?post=1185827"},{"taxonomy":"msr-focus-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-focus-area?post=1185827"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=1185827"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=1185827"},{"taxonomy":"msr-field-of-study","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-field-of-study?post=1185827"},{"taxonomy":"msr-conference","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-conference?post=1185827"},{"taxonomy":"msr-journal","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-journal?post=1185827"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=1185827"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=1185827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}