@inproceedings{zhang-etal-2026-adaptmmbench,
title = "{A}dapt{MMB}ench: Benchmarking Adaptive Multimodal Reasoning for Mode Selection and Reasoning Process",
author = "Zhang, Xintong and
Zhang, Xiaowen and
Wu, Jingrong and
Gao, Zhi and
Yan, Shilin and
Diao, Zhenxin and
Gao, Kunpeng and
Chen, Xuanyan and
Wu, Yuwei and
Jia, Yunde and
Li, Qing",
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.2318/",
pages = "49761--49798",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-462-0",
abstract = "Adaptive multimodal reasoning has emerged as a promising frontier in Vision-Language Models (VLMs), aiming to dynamically modulate between tool-augmented visual reasoning and text reasoning to enhance both effectiveness and efficiency. However, existing evaluations rely on static difficulty labels and simple metrics, overlooking the model-dependent nature of task difficulties: a task that is challenging for one model may be trivial for another. Consequently, they obscure the distinction between reasoning mode selection and overall task accuracy while neglecting fine-grained reasoning process analyses. In this paper, we propose AdaptMMBench, a comprehensive benchmark for adaptive multimodal reasoning across five domains: natural scene, OCR, GUI, knowledge, and math, encompassing both direct perception and complex reasoning tasks. AdaptMMBench utilizes a Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) metric to evaluate the quality of reasoning mode selection, isolating this meta-cognition ability by dynamically identifying task difficulties based on models' capability boundaries. Moreover, AdaptMMBench facilitates multi-dimensional reasoning process evaluation across key step coverage, tool effectiveness, and computational efficiency. Our evaluation shows that strong reasoning mode selection is helpful, but final adaptive gains and efficiency also depend on overall model capability. Process metrics further diagnose bottlenecks in reasoning coherence, tool use, and cost for improving adaptive performance and efficiency."
}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="zhang-etal-2026-adaptmmbench">
<titleInfo>
<title>AdaptMMBench: Benchmarking Adaptive Multimodal Reasoning for Mode Selection and Reasoning Process</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Xintong</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Xiaowen</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jingrong</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Wu</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Zhi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Gao</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Shilin</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Yan</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Zhenxin</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Diao</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Kunpeng</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Gao</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Xuanyan</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Chen</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yuwei</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Wu</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yunde</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Jia</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Qing</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Li</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>Adaptive multimodal reasoning has emerged as a promising frontier in Vision-Language Models (VLMs), aiming to dynamically modulate between tool-augmented visual reasoning and text reasoning to enhance both effectiveness and efficiency. However, existing evaluations rely on static difficulty labels and simple metrics, overlooking the model-dependent nature of task difficulties: a task that is challenging for one model may be trivial for another. Consequently, they obscure the distinction between reasoning mode selection and overall task accuracy while neglecting fine-grained reasoning process analyses. In this paper, we propose AdaptMMBench, a comprehensive benchmark for adaptive multimodal reasoning across five domains: natural scene, OCR, GUI, knowledge, and math, encompassing both direct perception and complex reasoning tasks. AdaptMMBench utilizes a Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) metric to evaluate the quality of reasoning mode selection, isolating this meta-cognition ability by dynamically identifying task difficulties based on models’ capability boundaries. Moreover, AdaptMMBench facilitates multi-dimensional reasoning process evaluation across key step coverage, tool effectiveness, and computational efficiency. Our evaluation shows that strong reasoning mode selection is helpful, but final adaptive gains and efficiency also depend on overall model capability. Process metrics further diagnose bottlenecks in reasoning coherence, tool use, and cost for improving adaptive performance and efficiency.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">zhang-etal-2026-adaptmmbench</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.2318/</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2026-10</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>49761</start>
<end>49798</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T AdaptMMBench: Benchmarking Adaptive Multimodal Reasoning for Mode Selection and Reasoning Process
%A Zhang, Xintong
%A Zhang, Xiaowen
%A Wu, Jingrong
%A Gao, Zhi
%A Yan, Shilin
%A Diao, Zhenxin
%A Gao, Kunpeng
%A Chen, Xuanyan
%A Wu, Yuwei
%A Jia, Yunde
%A Li, Qing
%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 zhang-etal-2026-adaptmmbench
%X Adaptive multimodal reasoning has emerged as a promising frontier in Vision-Language Models (VLMs), aiming to dynamically modulate between tool-augmented visual reasoning and text reasoning to enhance both effectiveness and efficiency. However, existing evaluations rely on static difficulty labels and simple metrics, overlooking the model-dependent nature of task difficulties: a task that is challenging for one model may be trivial for another. Consequently, they obscure the distinction between reasoning mode selection and overall task accuracy while neglecting fine-grained reasoning process analyses. In this paper, we propose AdaptMMBench, a comprehensive benchmark for adaptive multimodal reasoning across five domains: natural scene, OCR, GUI, knowledge, and math, encompassing both direct perception and complex reasoning tasks. AdaptMMBench utilizes a Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) metric to evaluate the quality of reasoning mode selection, isolating this meta-cognition ability by dynamically identifying task difficulties based on models’ capability boundaries. Moreover, AdaptMMBench facilitates multi-dimensional reasoning process evaluation across key step coverage, tool effectiveness, and computational efficiency. Our evaluation shows that strong reasoning mode selection is helpful, but final adaptive gains and efficiency also depend on overall model capability. Process metrics further diagnose bottlenecks in reasoning coherence, tool use, and cost for improving adaptive performance and efficiency.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.2318/
%P 49761-49798
Markdown (Informal)
[AdaptMMBench: Benchmarking Adaptive Multimodal Reasoning for Mode Selection and Reasoning Process](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.2318/) (Zhang et al., Findings 2026)
ACL
- Xintong Zhang, Xiaowen Zhang, Jingrong Wu, Zhi Gao, Shilin Yan, Zhenxin Diao, Kunpeng Gao, Xuanyan Chen, Yuwei Wu, Yunde Jia, and Qing Li. 2026. AdaptMMBench: Benchmarking Adaptive Multimodal Reasoning for Mode Selection and Reasoning Process. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026, pages 49761–49798, Budapest, Hungary. Association for Computational Linguistics.