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Reason Through the Latent! Making Latent Visual Reasoning Necessary

quality89

Updated 7 h ago · first seen 11 Sept 2026

paper_01M294FTN2NMSMM9SQDR5KMDBW

Published: 11 Sept 2026; T1 · 7 h ago
arXiv: 2609.06746; T1 · 7 h ago
Category: cs.AI; T1 · 7 h ago

Abstract

-cross Abstract: Latent visual reasoning aims to perform multimodal reasoning through hidden-state computation rather than explicit textual chains of thought. However, visual information being present in a latent state does not imply that the model actually relies on that state when producing its answer, especially when alternative image-conditioned paths remain available. We introduce Causal Visual Recurrent Reasoning (CVRR), which preserves pretrained visual competence while making recurrent computation the required image-conditioned path to prediction. CVRR initializes recurrence from the question hidden state after the pretrained vision-language model has incorporated the image, then repeatedly updates this state while re-reading the same fixed visual evidence. Before decoding, visual states and the original multimodal KV cache are removed so that only the final recurrent state carries image-conditioned information to the answer. Across the $V^*$, MMVP, BLINK, and MME-RealWorld-Lite benchmarks, CVRR retains strong performance under this strict interface, while compatible latent reasoners fail to recover comparable visual competence even when retrained under the same constraint. Causal interventions further show that predictions remain sensitive to recurrent content when the question is held fixed, and that persistent visual evidence causally revises the recurrent trajectory. These results distinguish latent informativeness from latent computation that is actually used for prediction.

Authors 3

Suhyeong Park, Junha Jung, Jaewoo Kang

Specification

Official page: arxiv.org/abs/2609.06746
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 7 h agohigh
Arxiv announce type: replace
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 7 h agohigh
arXiv id: 2609.06746
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 7 h agohigh
Categories: cs.AI, cs.CL, cs.CV, cs.LG
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 7 h agohigh
PDF: arxiv.org/pdf/2609.06746
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 7 h agohigh
Primary category: cs.AI
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 7 h agohigh
Published: 11 Sept 2026
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 7 h agohigh

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Provenance

Attributed facts

Source tiers

T19

Freshest observation

7 h ago

Conflicts

None

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Claim history

9 claims · 9 properties

Official pageofficial_url1

Claim history for Official page
Value	Valid from → to	Status	Source	Confidence	Extractor
https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.06746	11 Sept 2026 21:02 UTC → current	current	arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1	high	deterministic

Abstractabstract1

Claim history for Abstract
Value	Valid from → to	Status	Source	Confidence	Extractor
-cross Abstract: Latent visual reasoning aims to perform multimodal reasoning through hidden-state computation rather than explicit textual chains of thought. However, visual information being present in a latent state does not imply that the model actually relies on that state when producing its answer, especially when alternative image-conditioned paths remain available. We introduce Causal Visual Recurrent Reasoning (CVRR), which preserves pretrained visual competence while making recurrent computation the required image-conditioned path to prediction. CVRR initializes recurrence from the question hidden state after the pretrained vision-language model has incorporated the image, then repeatedly updates this state while re-reading the same fixed visual evidence. Before decoding, visual states and the original multimodal KV cache are removed so that only the final recurrent state carries image-conditioned information to the answer. Across the $V^*$, MMVP, BLINK, and MME-RealWorld-Lite benchmarks, CVRR retains strong performance under this strict interface, while compatible latent reasoners fail to recover comparable visual competence even when retrained under the same constraint. Causal interventions further show that predictions remain sensitive to recurrent content when the question is held fixed, and that persistent visual evidence causally revises the recurrent trajectory. These results distinguish latent informativeness from latent computation that is actually used for prediction.	11 Sept 2026 21:02 UTC → current	current	arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1	high	deterministic

Arxiv announce typearxiv_announce_type1

Claim history for Arxiv announce type
Value	Valid from → to	Status	Source	Confidence	Extractor
replace	11 Sept 2026 21:02 UTC → current	current	arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1	high	deterministic

arXiv idarxiv_id1

Claim history for arXiv id
Value	Valid from → to	Status	Source	Confidence	Extractor
2609.06746	11 Sept 2026 21:02 UTC → current	current	arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1	high	deterministic

Authorsauthors1

Claim history for Authors
Value	Valid from → to	Status	Source	Confidence	Extractor
Suhyeong Park, Junha Jung, Jaewoo Kang	11 Sept 2026 21:02 UTC → current	current	arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1	high	deterministic

Categoriescategories1

Claim history for Categories
Value	Valid from → to	Status	Source	Confidence	Extractor
cs.AI, cs.CL, cs.CV, cs.LG	11 Sept 2026 21:02 UTC → current	current	arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1	high	deterministic

PDFpdf_url1

Claim history for PDF
Value	Valid from → to	Status	Source	Confidence	Extractor
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2609.06746	11 Sept 2026 21:02 UTC → current	current	arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1	high	deterministic

Primary categoryprimary_category1

Claim history for Primary category
Value	Valid from → to	Status	Source	Confidence	Extractor
cs.AI	11 Sept 2026 21:02 UTC → current	current	arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1	high	deterministic

Publishedpublished_at1

Claim history for Published
Value	Valid from → to	Status	Source	Confidence	Extractor
11 Sept 2026	11 Sept 2026 21:02 UTC → current	current	arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1	high	deterministic

Claims are temporal and append-only: a new observation closes the previous claim (valid_to) instead of overwriting it. Conflicting claims from different sources are kept side by side and flagged — never averaged. Methodology →

Source documents
Source	Document	Type	Tier	Last observed	Snapshots
arXiv (Atom API + RSS)	rss.arxiv.org/rss/cs.LG	feed	T1· Official	5 h ago	1

Tier 1 = official/primary, 2 = quality secondary, 3 = community, 4 = unverified. Every snapshot is archived; see all sources and the methodology.