Two Clocks in Diffusion MLLMs: When Answers Stabilize Before Rationales Unfold

Excerpt

arXiv:2610.00953v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: An answer candidate in a masked diffusion MLLM can stabilize while its rationale is still unfolding. We distinguish retrospective stabilization of the logged candidate from token commitment, and examine these two clocks relative to rationale generation. Analyzing our results across three visual question-answering benchmarks, we find that 89.4-98.1% of the rationale-side canvas remains unwritten at stabilization in single-block, EOS-suppressed LaV