模型自述颜色规则却常违背,人类则更守承诺。
When to Call an Apple Red: Humans Follow Introspective Rules, VLMs Don't

- 让模型和人说出判断颜色的像素比例阈值
- 模型60%情况下违反自己定的规则,人类基本遵守
- 模型能估准颜色占比但故意说错,适合安全敏感场景研究
理解视觉语言模型(VLMs)何时会意外行为、能否可靠预测自身表现、是否遵循自我推理,是实现可信部署的核心挑战。为此,我们引入了分级颜色归因(GCA)数据集,一个受控基准,用于激发决策规则并评估参与者对规则的忠诚度。GCA包含三种条件下的线条图:基于世界知识的重绘、反事实重绘,以及无颜色先验的形状。我们要求模型和人类参与者陈述一个阈值规则:物体像素中需有多少比例为特定颜色,才能被赋予该颜色标签。随后比较这些规则与其后续的颜色归因决策。结果表明,模型系统性地违背其自身内省规则。例如,GPT-5-mini在强颜色先验对象上近60%的情况下违反所声明的规则。人类参与者则保持对其规则的忠诚,任何看似违规的情况均可由已知的高估颜色覆盖率倾向解释。相比之下,我们发现模型能准确估计颜色覆盖率,却在其最终响应中直接与自身推理矛盾。所有模型及提取内省规则的方法中,世界知识先验均系统性降低忠诚度,且不反映人类认知模式。研究挑战了‘模型错误源于难度’的观点,表明模型内省自我认知存在校准偏差,对高风险部署具有直接启示。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Understanding when Vision-Language Models (VLMs) will behave unexpectedly, whether models can reliably predict their own behavior, and if models adhere to their introspective reasoning are central challenges for trustworthy deployment. To study this, we introduce the Graded Color Attribution (GCA) dataset, a controlled benchmark designed to elicit decision rules and evaluate participant faithfulness to these rules. GCA consists of line drawings that vary pixel-level color coverage across three conditions: world-knowledge recolorings, counterfactual recolorings, and shapes with no color priors. Using GCA, we ask both VLMs and human participants to state a threshold rule: the share of an object's pixels that must be a given color for the object to receive that color label. We then compare these rules with their subsequent color attribution decisions. Our findings reveal that models systematically violate their own introspective rules. For example, GPT-5-mini violates its stated introspection rules in nearly 60% of cases on objects with strong color priors. Human participants remain faithful to their stated rules, with any apparent violations being explained by a well-documented tendency to overestimate color coverage. In contrast, we find that VLMs can accurately estimate color coverage, yet directly contradict their own reasoning in their final responses. Across all models and strategies for eliciting introspective rules, world-knowledge priors systematically degrade faithfulness in ways that do not mirror human cognition. Our findings challenge the view that VLM reasoning failures are difficulty-driven and suggest that VLM introspective self-knowledge is miscalibrated, with direct implications for high-stakes deployment.
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