Reinforcement Learning for Compositional Generalization with Outcome-Level Optimization

2026-05-06

Abstract

Compositional generalization refers to correctly interpret novel combinations of known primitives, which remains a major challenge. Existing approaches often rely on supervised fine-tuning, which encourages models to imitate target outputs. This token-level training paradigm fails to capture the global compositional structure required for generalizing to unseen combinations. In this work, we investigate whether compositional generalization can instead be improved through outcome-level reinforcement learning. We adopt Group Relative Policy Optimization to optimize models based on feedback on their final outputs. Within this framework, we explore both a simple binary outcome reward and a composite reward that provides additional composition feedback. Experiments on multiple compositional benchmarks show that reinforcement learning improves compositional generalization compared to supervised fine-tuning. Further analysis reveals that supervised models tend to overfit frequent training compositions, whereas reinforcement learning improves compositional generalization by reshaping the output distribution, particularly for more complex composition types.

Problem

• compositional generalization
• reinforcement learning
• outcome-level optimization
• supervised fine-tuning
• compositionality

Innovation

• reinforcement learning
• compositional generalization
• outcome-level optimization
• Group Relative Policy Optimization
• composite reward