@inproceedings{jin-etal-2026-entropy,
title = "Entropy Is Not Enough: Unlocking Effective Reinforcement Learning for Visual Reasoning via Vision-Anchored Token Selection",
author = "Jin, Senjie and
Wang, Peixin and
Liu, Boyang and
Fan, Xiaoran and
Li, Shuo and
Xi, Zhiheng and
Zhang, Jiazheng and
Zhou, Yuhao and
Gui, Tao and
Zhang, Qi and
Huang, Xuanjing",
editor = "Lee, Hung-Yi and
Dev, Sunipa and
Li, Jessy and
Elliott, Desmond",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {EMNLP} 2026",
month = oct,
year = "2026",
address = "Budapest, Hungary",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.2086/",
pages = "44403--44426",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-462-0",
abstract = "While token-level entropy is commonly recognized as effective for credit assignment in text-only reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR), it remains unclear whether this mechanism still holds in visual reasoning. Our controlled study shows that this mechanism collapses in visual reasoning due to the omission of vision-sensitive tokens with naturally low entropy. Although existing multimodal RL methods increasingly acknowledge the importance of visual perception, they struggle to satisfy the inherent demand for interleaving precise perceptual grounding with semantic reasoning, either lacking systematic visual measurements or overlooking that token entropy primarily drives semantic exploration. To address this, we introduce VEPO (Vision-Entropy token-selection for Policy Optimization), an effective RL framework explicitly integrating visual sensitivity with token entropy via a principled multiplicative coupling, where VEPO redirects gradient credit toward tokens which are simultaneously visually grounded and highly informative. Extensive experiments demonstrate VEPO{'}s leading performance, consistently outperforming the strongest RL baseline at 7B-scale and 3B-scale. Ablations further substantiate the soundness of our method."
}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="jin-etal-2026-entropy">
<titleInfo>
<title>Entropy Is Not Enough: Unlocking Effective Reinforcement Learning for Visual Reasoning via Vision-Anchored Token Selection</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Senjie</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Jin</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Peixin</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Wang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Boyang</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Liu</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Xiaoran</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Fan</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Shuo</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Li</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Zhiheng</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Xi</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jiazheng</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yuhao</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhou</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Tao</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Gui</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Qi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Xuanjing</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Huang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2026-10</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Hung-Yi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Lee</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Sunipa</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Dev</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jessy</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Li</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Desmond</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Elliott</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">Budapest, Hungary</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
<identifier type="isbn">979-8-89176-462-0</identifier>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>While token-level entropy is commonly recognized as effective for credit assignment in text-only reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR), it remains unclear whether this mechanism still holds in visual reasoning. Our controlled study shows that this mechanism collapses in visual reasoning due to the omission of vision-sensitive tokens with naturally low entropy. Although existing multimodal RL methods increasingly acknowledge the importance of visual perception, they struggle to satisfy the inherent demand for interleaving precise perceptual grounding with semantic reasoning, either lacking systematic visual measurements or overlooking that token entropy primarily drives semantic exploration. To address this, we introduce VEPO (Vision-Entropy token-selection for Policy Optimization), an effective RL framework explicitly integrating visual sensitivity with token entropy via a principled multiplicative coupling, where VEPO redirects gradient credit toward tokens which are simultaneously visually grounded and highly informative. Extensive experiments demonstrate VEPO’s leading performance, consistently outperforming the strongest RL baseline at 7B-scale and 3B-scale. Ablations further substantiate the soundness of our method.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">jin-etal-2026-entropy</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.2086/</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2026-10</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>44403</start>
<end>44426</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Entropy Is Not Enough: Unlocking Effective Reinforcement Learning for Visual Reasoning via Vision-Anchored Token Selection
%A Jin, Senjie
%A Wang, Peixin
%A Liu, Boyang
%A Fan, Xiaoran
%A Li, Shuo
%A Xi, Zhiheng
%A Zhang, Jiazheng
%A Zhou, Yuhao
%A Gui, Tao
%A Zhang, Qi
%A Huang, Xuanjing
%Y Lee, Hung-Yi
%Y Dev, Sunipa
%Y Li, Jessy
%Y Elliott, Desmond
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026
%D 2026
%8 October
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Budapest, Hungary
%@ 979-8-89176-462-0
%F jin-etal-2026-entropy
%X While token-level entropy is commonly recognized as effective for credit assignment in text-only reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR), it remains unclear whether this mechanism still holds in visual reasoning. Our controlled study shows that this mechanism collapses in visual reasoning due to the omission of vision-sensitive tokens with naturally low entropy. Although existing multimodal RL methods increasingly acknowledge the importance of visual perception, they struggle to satisfy the inherent demand for interleaving precise perceptual grounding with semantic reasoning, either lacking systematic visual measurements or overlooking that token entropy primarily drives semantic exploration. To address this, we introduce VEPO (Vision-Entropy token-selection for Policy Optimization), an effective RL framework explicitly integrating visual sensitivity with token entropy via a principled multiplicative coupling, where VEPO redirects gradient credit toward tokens which are simultaneously visually grounded and highly informative. Extensive experiments demonstrate VEPO’s leading performance, consistently outperforming the strongest RL baseline at 7B-scale and 3B-scale. Ablations further substantiate the soundness of our method.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.2086/
%P 44403-44426
Markdown (Informal)
[Entropy Is Not Enough: Unlocking Effective Reinforcement Learning for Visual Reasoning via Vision-Anchored Token Selection](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.2086/) (Jin et al., Findings 2026)
ACL
- Senjie Jin, Peixin Wang, Boyang Liu, Xiaoran Fan, Shuo Li, Zhiheng Xi, Jiazheng Zhang, Yuhao Zhou, Tao Gui, Qi Zhang, and Xuanjing Huang. 2026. Entropy Is Not Enough: Unlocking Effective Reinforcement Learning for Visual Reasoning via Vision-Anchored Token Selection. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026, pages 44403–44426, Budapest, Hungary. Association for Computational Linguistics.