Qianyu He, Junting Lu, Yikai Zhang, Siyu Yuan, Xiaojun Meng Large Model Data Technology Lab, Huawei Technologies Ltd., Jiansheng Wei, Jiaqing Liang Fudan University, Yanghua Xiao Fudan University
Metaphor reasoning is an essential cognitive ability that maps knowledge from familiar domains to more abstract domains. This ability functions as a meta-ability underlying many types of reasoning. However, existing work rarely investigates how metaphor reasoning affects other reasoning abilities. To bridge this gap, we systematically study how metaphor reasoning, particularly through metaphorical riddles, can enhance broader reasoning abilities in large language models. We propose MetaR, an automated system for synthesizing metaphorical riddles that satisfy five quality dimensions: diverse, balanced, reasoning-oriented, challenging, and verifiable. Leveraging that answer categories determine riddle categories, we employ a hierarchical answer taxonomy for the former three criteria and a multi-agent refinement framework for the latter two, generating a high-quality dataset. Training with reinforcement learning on verifiable rewards using only thousands of metaphorical riddles, we demonstrate improvements across six out-of-distribution reasoning domains. Analysis reveals transfer effectiveness depends on model scale and pattern-target domain alignment. The datasets and code are publicly available at https://github.com/Abbey4799/MetaR.
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cs.CL · cs.MA
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) · 2026 · 正式发表
Sihang Jiang Fudan University, Zhiyu Lu Fudan University, Keyi Wang, Jiaqing Liang Fudan University, Yanghua Xiao Fudan University, Xiaojun Meng Large Model Data Technology Lab, Huawei Technologies Ltd., Jiansheng Wei
While extensive research has evaluated LLMs on complex reasoning tasks, the foundational building blocks of logical reasoning remain underexplored. We introduce IIBench, a benchmark evaluating immediate inference (elementary operations over categorical propositions). Our evaluation reveals that even SoTA models exhibit systematic deficiencies in immediate inference, and establishes immediate inference as foundational: it mediates approximately 40% of the effect on syllogistic reasoning, with near-perfect correlation ( = 0.98) across reasoning benchmarks. Our analysis reveals that models lack robust operator grounding, oscillating between structural reasoning and surface pattern matching with inconsistent handling of quantifiers and negation.
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cs.CL
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) · 2026 · 正式发表
Evaluating the multilingual and multicultural capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) is essential for their global utility. However, current benchmarks face three critical limitations: (1) fragmented evaluation dimensions that often neglect deep cultural nuances; (2) insufficient language coverage in subjective tasks relying on low-quality machine translation; and (3) shallow analysis that lacks diagnostic depth beyond simple rankings. To address these, we introduce GaoYao, a comprehensive benchmark with 182.3k samples, 26 languages and 51 nations/areas. First, GaoYao proposes a unified framework categorizing evaluation tasks into three cultural layers (General Multilingual, Cross-cultural, Monocultural) and nine cognitive sub-layers. Second, we achieve native-quality expansion by leveraging experts to rigorously localize subjective benchmarks into 19 languages and synthesizing cross-cultural test sets for 34 cultures, surpassing prior coverage by up to 111%. Third, we conduct an in-depth diagnostic analysis on 20+ flagship and compact LLMs. Our findings reveal significant geographical performance disparities and distinct gaps between tasks, offering a reliable map for future work. We release the benchmark.
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cs.CL
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) · 2026 · 正式发表