Can Video Large Multimodal Models Think Like Doubters-or Double-Down: A Study on Defeasible Video Entailment

Abstract

Video Large Multimodal Models (VLMMs) have made impressive strides in understanding video content, but they often struggle with abstract and adaptive reasoning-the ability to revise their interpretations when new information emerges. In reality, conclusions are rarely set in stone; additional context can strengthen or weaken an initial inference. To address this, we introduce Defeasible Video Entailment (DVidE), a new task that challenges models to think like doubters, constantly updating their reasoning based on evolving evidence. In DVidE, given a video premise and a textual hypothesis, models must determine whether a new update strengthens or weakens the hypothesis (classification version) or generate a coherent update that modifies the entailment relationship (generation version). For solving the classification task, we propose the Chain of Counterfactual Thought framework, utilizing counterfactual reasoning, ASR-enhanced video content, and rationale refinement to reduce inference bias. For the generation task, we develop a framework that combines ASR output with a Large Language Model (LLM) to produce coherent, contextually relevant updates aligned with the intended strengthener or weakener goals. Additionally, we introduce a novel benchmark dataset, with strengthener/weakener annotations and an LLM-based evaluation metric specifically designed for assessing generative performance. Experimental results demonstrate significant improvements, highlighting our proposed method in enhancing dynamic reasoning capabilities of VLMMs.