@inproceedings{mo-etal-2026-dixitworld,
    title = "{DIXITWORLD}: Evaluating Multimodal Abductive Reasoning in Vision-Language Models with Multi-Agent Dixit Gameplay",
    author = "MO, Yunxiang  and
      Zheng, Tianshi  and
      Zong, Qing  and
      Liu, Jiayu  and
      Xu, Baixuan  and
      Yim, Yauwai  and
      Chan, Chunkit  and
      Bai, Jiaxin  and
      Song, Yangqiu",
    editor = "Liakata, Maria  and
      Moreira, Viviane P.  and
      Zhang, Jiajun  and
      Jurgens, David",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics (Volume 2: Short Papers)",
    month = jul,
    year = "2026",
    address = "San Diego, California, United States",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-acl/2026.acl-short.37/",
    pages = "448--462",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-391-3",
    abstract = "Multimodal abductive reasoning {---} the generation and selection of explanatory hypotheses from partial observations {---} is a cornerstone of intelligence. Current evaluations of such ability in vision{--}language models (VLMs) are largely confined to static, single-agent tasks. Inspired by Dixit, we introduce DixitWorld, a comprehensive evaluation suite designed to deconstruct this challenge. DixitWorld features two core components: DixitArena, a dynamic, multi-agent environment that evaluates both hypothesis generation (a ``storyteller'' crafting cryptic clues) and hypothesis selection ({''}listeners'' choosing the target image from decoys) under imperfect information; and DixitBench, a static QA benchmark that isolates the listener{'}s task for efficient, controlled evaluation. Results from DixitArena reveal distinct, role-dependent behaviors: smaller open-source models often excel as creative storytellers, producing imaginative yet less discriminative clues, whereas larger proprietary models demonstrate superior overall performance, particularly as listeners. Performance on DixitBench strongly correlates with listener results in DixitArena, validating it as a reliable proxy for hypothesis selection. Our findings reveal a key trade-off between generative creativity and discriminative understanding in multimodal abductive reasoning, a central challenge for developing more balanced and capable vision-language agents."
}