用元认知信号增强大模型推理,无需定制评分规则
Metacognition as Reward: Reinforcing LLM Reasoning via Knowledge and Regulation Signals

- 引入元认知知识与调控双维度,自动识别关键信息并优化推理过程
- 在22个基准上平均提升7.7%,超越基线模型和vanilla DAPO
- 适合需要稳定推理能力的复杂任务,尤其适用于跨领域场景
近期强化学习方法显著提升了大语言模型的推理能力。现有奖励设计主要分为两类:(1) 可验证奖励强化学习(RLVR)通过可执行检查或真实答案生成结果信号,但对中间推理行为指导有限;(2) 评分标准作为奖励(RaR)利用自然语言评分标准评估推理质量与任务合规性,但常需针对具体任务设计评分规则,成本较高。为解决这些问题,本文提出元认知即奖励(MaR),一种受元认知启发的强化学习框架,通过两个通用过程维度引导模型推理:(i) 元认知知识,自动识别与任务相关的信息,无需手工定制实例化评分标准;(ii) 元认知调控,规划并调整推理过程,提供超越最终答案的奖励指导。MaR将模型生成轨迹显式拆解为元认知组件,并基于任务知识覆盖率、调控一致性及最终答案正确性进行轨迹级奖励优化。实验表明,在22个基准测试中,MaR持续提升模型性能,相较于基线模型最高提升7.7%,相较于vanilla DAPO最高提升11.0%。值得注意的是,Qwen3.5-9B + MaR在整体平均表现上超越GPT-OSS-120B,且在多个独立基准上优于更强模型。过程分析显示推理质量显著提升。此外,该方法在域外数据集上也具备良好泛化能力,训练后模型平均优于对应基线。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Recent RL methods have substantially improved the reasoning abilities of LLMs. Existing reward designs mainly follow two paradigms: (1) Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) derives outcome signals from executable checks or ground-truth answers, but provides limited guidance for intermediate reasoning behaviors. (2) Rubrics-as-reward (RaR) goes beyond final-answer checking by using natural-language rubrics to assess reasoning quality and task compliance, but often requires instance-specific rubrics and substantial design effort. To address these issues, we introduce Metacognition-as-Reward (MaR), a metacognition-inspired RL framework that guides LLM reasoning through two general process dimensions: i) metacognitive knowledge, which identifies task-relevant information without hand-crafted instance-specific rubrics, and ii) metacognitive regulation, which plans and adjusts the reasoning process to provide reward guidance beyond final-answer outcomes. MaR scaffolds model rollouts into explicit metacognitive components and optimizes them with a trajectory-level reward over task knowledge coverage, regulation fidelity, and final-answer correctness. In this way, MaR extends reward feedback to reasoning trajectories while grounding the reward signals in general metacognitive dimensions. Experiments on 22 benchmarks show that MaR consistently improves model performance, achieving up to a 7.7% gain over the base model and up to an 11.0% gain over vanilla DAPO. Notably, Qwen3.5-9B + MaR narrows the gap to frontier models, surpassing GPT-OSS-120B on overall average and outperforming stronger models on several individual benchmarks. Process-level analysis further shows substantial improvements in reasoning process quality. MaR also generalizes to out-of-domain datasets, where MaR-trained models improve over their corresponding base models on average.
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