@inproceedings{li-etal-2026-look,
title = "Look Less, Reason More: Rollout-Guided Adaptive Pixel-Space Reasoning",
author = "Li, Xuchen and
Li, Xuzhao and
Gao, Jiahui and
Pi, Renjie and
Hu, Shiyu and
Zhang, Wentao",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.225/",
pages = "4948--4967",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-390-6",
abstract = "Vision-Language Models (VLMs) excel at many multimodal tasks, yet they frequently struggle with tasks requiring precise understanding and handling of fine-grained visual elements. This is mainly due to information loss during image encoding or insufficient attention to critical regions. Recent work has shown promise by incorporating pixel-level visual information into the reasoning process, enabling VLMs to access high-resolution visual details during their thought process. However, this pixel-level information is often overused, leading to inefficiency and distraction from irrelevant visual details. To address these challenges, we propose the first framework for adaptive pixel reasoning that dynamically determines necessary pixel-level operations based on the input query. Specifically, we first apply operation-aware supervised fine-tuning to establish baseline competence in textual reasoning and visual operations, then design a novel rollout-guided reinforcement learning framework relying on feedback of the model{'}s own responses, which enables the VLM to determine when pixel operations should be invoked based on query difficulty. Experiments on extensive multimodal reasoning benchmarks show that our model achieves superior performance while significantly reducing unnecessary visual operations. Impressively, our model achieves 73.4{\%} accuracy on HR-Bench 4K while maintaining a tool usage ratio of only 20.1{\%}, improving accuracy and simultaneously reducing tool usage by 66.5{\%} compared to the previous methods."
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<abstract>Vision-Language Models (VLMs) excel at many multimodal tasks, yet they frequently struggle with tasks requiring precise understanding and handling of fine-grained visual elements. This is mainly due to information loss during image encoding or insufficient attention to critical regions. Recent work has shown promise by incorporating pixel-level visual information into the reasoning process, enabling VLMs to access high-resolution visual details during their thought process. However, this pixel-level information is often overused, leading to inefficiency and distraction from irrelevant visual details. To address these challenges, we propose the first framework for adaptive pixel reasoning that dynamically determines necessary pixel-level operations based on the input query. Specifically, we first apply operation-aware supervised fine-tuning to establish baseline competence in textual reasoning and visual operations, then design a novel rollout-guided reinforcement learning framework relying on feedback of the model’s own responses, which enables the VLM to determine when pixel operations should be invoked based on query difficulty. Experiments on extensive multimodal reasoning benchmarks show that our model achieves superior performance while significantly reducing unnecessary visual operations. Impressively, our model achieves 73.4% accuracy on HR-Bench 4K while maintaining a tool usage ratio of only 20.1%, improving accuracy and simultaneously reducing tool usage by 66.5% compared to the previous methods.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Look Less, Reason More: Rollout-Guided Adaptive Pixel-Space Reasoning
%A Li, Xuchen
%A Li, Xuzhao
%A Gao, Jiahui
%A Pi, Renjie
%A Hu, Shiyu
%A Zhang, Wentao
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-390-6
%F li-etal-2026-look
%X Vision-Language Models (VLMs) excel at many multimodal tasks, yet they frequently struggle with tasks requiring precise understanding and handling of fine-grained visual elements. This is mainly due to information loss during image encoding or insufficient attention to critical regions. Recent work has shown promise by incorporating pixel-level visual information into the reasoning process, enabling VLMs to access high-resolution visual details during their thought process. However, this pixel-level information is often overused, leading to inefficiency and distraction from irrelevant visual details. To address these challenges, we propose the first framework for adaptive pixel reasoning that dynamically determines necessary pixel-level operations based on the input query. Specifically, we first apply operation-aware supervised fine-tuning to establish baseline competence in textual reasoning and visual operations, then design a novel rollout-guided reinforcement learning framework relying on feedback of the model’s own responses, which enables the VLM to determine when pixel operations should be invoked based on query difficulty. Experiments on extensive multimodal reasoning benchmarks show that our model achieves superior performance while significantly reducing unnecessary visual operations. Impressively, our model achieves 73.4% accuracy on HR-Bench 4K while maintaining a tool usage ratio of only 20.1%, improving accuracy and simultaneously reducing tool usage by 66.5% compared to the previous methods.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.225/
%P 4948-4967
Markdown (Informal)
[Look Less, Reason More: Rollout-Guided Adaptive Pixel-Space Reasoning](https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.225/) (Li et al., ACL 2026)
ACL
- Xuchen Li, Xuzhao Li, Jiahui Gao, Renjie Pi, Shiyu Hu, and Wentao Zhang. 2026. Look Less, Reason More: Rollout-Guided Adaptive Pixel-Space Reasoning. In Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 4948–4967, San Diego, California, United States. Association for Computational Linguistics.