Timbre：面向无标签多模态测试时强化学习的可靠性感知调和共识框架

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Abstract:Label-free test-time reinforcement learning adapts vision--language models using rewards derived from their own predictions. However, misinterpreted visual evidence and sensitivity to textual formulation can produce a consistent but incorrect consensus that majority voting reinforces. Cross-view aggregation can expose such errors, but image and text transformations may themselves degrade task-relevant evidence to different extents. We introduce \method, a reliability-aware harmonic consensus framework for multimodal test-time reinforcement learning. \method constructs a $2\times2$ grid combining original and perturbed images with direct-solving and reframing modes, selects pseudo-labels through weighted harmonic aggregation, and adapts modality-level weights using batch-averaged, temporally smoothed shifts in pseudo-label confidence as a heuristic reliability signal. We formulate consensus as a weighted $\chi^2$-barycenter problem whose unique minimizer is the normalized weighted harmonic aggregate, without requiring correct-answer invariance. An exact support--dispersion decomposition characterizes when harmonic aggregation preserves or corrects arithmetic rankings, while a sensitivity analysis establishes how modality reweighting changes pairwise ranking margins, informing interpretation of the heuristic updates. Across six benchmarks and three Qwen3-VL model scales, \method outperforms TTRV in 16 of 18 benchmark--model settings on adaptation instances and 17 of 18 settings on held-out instances under matched estimation and optimization rollout counts. These results demonstrate improved target-task adaptation and transfer to unseen instances without further updates.

Submission history

From: Haoyu Wang [view email]
[v1] Thu, 29 Oct 2026 06:15:35 UTC (1,680 KB)