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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.6

On Spatial Reasoning and Perspective Transformation in Language Models

Authors: Haotong Zhang and Ian Pratt-Hartmann

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 393, 17th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2026)

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the performance of language models on spatial reasoning with textually presented data, with particular focus on the ability to switch between different perspectives (route vs. survey) - an important component of human spatial reasoning. Our methodology involves the construction of large, automatically labelled corpora, as opposed to crowd-sourced, human-annotated datasets; this approach focuses attention on the language models' command of underlying geometrical principles, rather than their access to background knowledge and commonsense rules-of-thumb. Results reveal that language models can acquire basic spatial reasoning ability after finetuning on targeted tasks, though they do not fully capture the underlying rules. Furthermore, language models show significant differences from humans in the perspective-transformation task, exhibiting distinct patterns of performance across perspective conditions.

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Haotong Zhang and Ian Pratt-Hartmann. On Spatial Reasoning and Perspective Transformation in Language Models. In 17th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 393, pp. 6:1-6:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{zhang_et_al:LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.6,
  author =	{Zhang, Haotong and Pratt-Hartmann, Ian},
  title =	{{On Spatial Reasoning and Perspective Transformation in Language Models}},
  booktitle =	{17th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2026)},
  pages =	{6:1--6:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-438-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{393},
  editor =	{Timpf, Sabine and Filomena, Gabriele and Kapaj, Armand and Zhu, Rui and Giudice, Nicholas A. and Manley, Ed},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.6},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-275503},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.6},
  annote =	{Keywords: Spatial Reasoning, Language Models, Perspective Transformation, Spatial Cognition}
}

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On Spatial Reasoning and Perspective Transformation in Language Models

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