arXiv:2510.02230cs.AIcs.CL2025-10被引 18

强化学习反而让大模型推理能力变窄,研究揭示了原因并提出改进方法。

The Reasoning Boundary Paradox: How Reinforcement Learning Constrains Language Models

  • 通过分析训练动态,发现强化学习会干扰模型解决其他问题的能力。
  • 高概率问题被过度强化,低概率问题被抑制,导致解题范围缩小。
  • 提出数据筛选算法,专注提升难问题表现,有效扩大推理边界。

基于可验证奖励的强化学习(RLVR)是提升大语言模型推理能力的关键方法,但近期研究表明其可能反而缩小推理边界。本文通过分析学习动态,揭示两大关键现象:一是负向干扰,学习解决某些训练问题会降低其他问题的正确解率,导致Pass@$k$性能下降;二是赢家通吃现象,RLVR过度强化基模型中高概率的正确解,抑制初始低概率问题。在多个数学推理基准上的理论与实证分析表明,该效应源于标准强化学习目标的在线策略采样机制,导致模型收敛于狭窄解法。基于此,我们提出一种简单有效的数据筛选算法,聚焦低概率问题,显著提升Pass@$k$性能。代码已开源。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has emerged as a key method for improving Large Language Models' reasoning capabilities, yet recent evidence suggests it may paradoxically shrink the reasoning boundary rather than expand it. This paper investigates the shrinkage issue of RLVR by analyzing its learning dynamics and reveals two critical phenomena that explain this failure. First, we expose negative interference in RLVR, where learning to solve certain training problems actively reduces the likelihood of correct solutions for others, leading to the decline of Pass@$k$ performance, or the probability of generating a correct solution within $k$ attempts. Second, we uncover the winner-take-all phenomenon: RLVR disproportionately reinforces problems with high likelihood, correct solutions, under the base model, while suppressing other initially low-likelihood ones. Through extensive theoretical and empirical analysis on multiple mathematical reasoning benchmarks, we show that this effect arises from the inherent on-policy sampling in standard RL objectives, causing the model to converge toward narrow solution strategies. Based on these insights, we propose a simple yet effective data curation algorithm that focuses RLVR learning on low-likelihood problems, achieving notable improvement in Pass@$k$ performance. Our code is available at https://github.com/mail-research/SELF-llm-interference.

强化学习推理能力大模型优化

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