对比正向与反向推理目标,发现二者可互补提升模型推理可靠性。
Forward versus Backward: Comparing Reasoning Objectives in Direct Preference Optimization
- 采用正向链式思维与反向验证两种训练信号,提升推理质量。
- 正向训练使准确率提升3.5个百分点,反向训练将误报率降至4.3%。
- 适合关注模型可信度与错误识别的科研人员参考。
大语言模型虽具备强大推理能力,但常生成看似合理却错误的答案,即幻觉现象。本文通过直接偏好优化(DPO)研究训练目标组合对推理可靠性的影响。考察两种互补信号:正向链式思维(训练模型生成正确推理过程)与反向验证(训练模型识别并承认候选答案中的错误)。在GSM8K数据集上的实验揭示了根本性权衡:仅使用正向训练时准确率从83.1%提升至86.6%(+3.5个百分点),而仅使用反向训练虽提升有限,但显著降低误报率,从13.4%降至4.3%。值得注意的是,两种训练方式均降低模型承认错误的比例,表明偏好优化增强了模型输出自信。结果表明,正向与反向推理目标提供不同且互补的学习信号:前者提升解题能力,后者改善验证校准。完整的训练与评估流程通过低秩适配(LoRA)高效实现,并已开源,以促进后续研究。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Large language models exhibit impressive reasoning capabilities yet frequently generate plausible but incorrect solutions, a phenomenon commonly termed hallucination. This paper investigates the effect of training objective composition on reasoning reliability through Direct Preference Optimization. Two complementary training signals are examined: forward chain-of-thought generation, which trains the model to produce correct reasoning traces, and backward verification, which trains the model to verify and acknowledge errors in candidate solutions. Experiments on GSM8K reveal a fundamental trade-off between these objectives. Forward-only DPO training achieves the highest accuracy improvement, increasing from 83.1% to 86.6% (+3.5 percentage points), while backward-only training yields minimal accuracy gains but substantially reduces the false positive rate from 13.4% to 4.3%. Notably, both training variants reduce acknowledgement rate compared to the baseline, suggesting that preference optimization increases model confidence in its outputs. These findings indicate that forward and backward reasoning objectives provide distinct and complementary learning signals: forward training improves problem-solving capability, while backward training improves verification calibration. The complete training and evaluation pipeline, implemented efficiently through Low-Rank Adaptation, is released to facilitate further research.
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