MR-ALIGN: Meta-Reasoning Informed Factuality Alignment for Large Reasoning Models (2026.findings-acl)
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Xinming Wang, Jian Xu, Bin Yu, Sheng Lian, yi Chen, Boran Wang, Yingjian Zhu, Hongzhu Yi, Hong-Ming Yang, Han Hu, Cheng-Lin Liu, Xu-Yao Zhang
| Challenge: | Large reasoning models (LRMs) show strong capabilities in complex reasoning, yet their marginal gains on evidence-dependent factual questions are limited. |
| Approach: | They propose a Meta-Reasoning informed alignment framework that quantifies state-transition probabilities along the model’s thinking process and constructs a transition-aware implicit reward that reinforces beneficial reasoning patterns while suppressing defective ones at the atomic thinking segments. |
| Outcome: | Empirical evaluations of four factual QA datasets and one long-form factuality benchmark show that MR-ALIGN consistently improves accuracy and truthfulness while reducing misleading reasoning. |
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