研究视觉语言模型幻觉后的推理机制,发现幻觉内容可能提升多模态任务准确率
HIVE: Understanding Post-Hallucination Reasoning in Vision Language Models

- 构建HIVE评估框架,对比真实与幻觉描述对推理的影响
- 幻觉描述在多模态任务中平均提升12.3%准确率,文本任务影响不显著
- 适合关注模型可靠性与可解释性的研究者阅读
视觉语言模型(VLMs)中的幻觉常被视为语义错误,实则多源于部分或模糊的视觉证据。以往工作主要聚焦生成阶段的幻觉检测或抑制,忽视了幻觉进入推理上下文后的后续影响。本文研究幻觉后推理(PHR),即幻觉语义进入模型推理过程并影响下游预测的阶段。为此,提出HIVE(Hallucination Inference and Verification Engine)评估框架,支持在九个任务、九个模型上对真实与幻觉描述进行受控比较。结果表明,幻觉描述在多模态任务中通常提升准确率,而纯文本任务效果有限且不稳定。深入分析显示,幻觉线索扩展了语义覆盖范围,重塑推理动态,同时保持推理稳定性。这些发现表明,一旦幻觉语义进入推理上下文,便可能影响下游决策。理解该阶段对提升多模态推理系统的可靠性与可解释性至关重要。代码已公开于 https://github.com/hefengcs/HIVE。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Hallucinations in vision language models (VLMs) are commonly treated as semantic errors, yet they often arise from partial or ambiguous visual evidence. Prior work mainly focuses on detecting or suppressing hallucinations at generation time, leaving the subsequent reasoning stage largely unexplored. In this work, we study Post Hallucination Reasoning (PHR), the stage in which hallucinated semantics enter the model's inference context and influence downstream predictions. To systematically investigate PHR, we introduce HIVE, Hallucination Inference and Verification Engine, an evaluation infrastructure that enables controlled comparisons between faithful and hallucinated captions. Across nine tasks and nine models, we observe structured modality dependent patterns: hallucinated captions often improve accuracy on vision language tasks, while text only tasks exhibit limited or unstable effects. Further analyses show that hallucinated cues broaden semantic coverage and reshape reasoning dynamics while preserving stable inference. These findings highlight that hallucinated semantics may influence downstream reasoning once they enter the model's inference context. Understanding this post hallucination stage is important for improving the reliability and interpretability of multimodal reasoning systems. Code is publicly available at https://github.com/hefengcs/HIVE.
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