You Need Reasoning to Learn Reasoning: The Limitations of Label-Free RL in Weak Base Models

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2511.04902v1
• Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2025 01:05:11 GMT
• Title: You Need Reasoning to Learn Reasoning: The Limitations of Label-Free RL in Weak Base Models
• Authors: Shuvendu Roy, Hossein Hajimirsadeghi, Mengyao Zhai, Golnoosh Samei,
• Abstract summary: We investigate the generalizability of label-free RL approaches to base models with limited reasoning capabilities.<n>We find that label-free RL is highly dependent on the base model's pre-existing reasoning capability.<n>We propose a simple yet effective method for label-free RL that utilizes curriculum learning to progressively introduce harder problems.
• Score: 12.14455026524814
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
• Abstract: Recent advances in large language models have demonstrated the promise of unsupervised reinforcement learning (RL) methods for enhancing reasoning capabilities without external supervision. However, the generalizability of these label-free RL approaches to smaller base models with limited reasoning capabilities remains unexplored. In this work, we systematically investigate the performance of label-free RL methods across different model sizes and reasoning strengths, from 0.5B to 7B parameters. Our empirical analysis reveals critical limitations: label-free RL is highly dependent on the base model's pre-existing reasoning capability, with performance often degrading below baseline levels for weaker models. We find that smaller models fail to generate sufficiently long or diverse chain-of-thought reasoning to enable effective self-reflection, and that training data difficulty plays a crucial role in determining success. To address these challenges, we propose a simple yet effective method for label-free RL that utilizes curriculum learning to progressively introduce harder problems during training and mask no-majority rollouts during training. Additionally, we introduce a data curation pipeline to generate samples with predefined difficulty. Our approach demonstrates consistent improvements across all model sizes and reasoning capabilities, providing a path toward more robust unsupervised RL that can bootstrap reasoning abilities in resource-constrained models. We make our code available at https://github.com/BorealisAI/CuMa

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