arXiv — NLP / Computation & Language · · 3 min read

Implicit vs. Explicit Prompting Strategies for LVLMs in Referential Communication

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Computer Science > Computation and Language

arXiv:2606.17372 (cs)
[Submitted on 16 Jun 2026]

Title:Implicit vs. Explicit Prompting Strategies for LVLMs in Referential Communication

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Abstract:Two recent studies (Jones et al. (2026); Zeng et al. (2026)) reach apparently contradictory conclusions about whether LVLMs can coordinate on efficient referring expressions. We control for task differences between the studies while directly comparing their prompting styles. We replicate the finding that models can coordinate efficient referring expressions when explicitly prompted to do so, suggesting that other task differences are not responsible for divergent results. However, we also find that the same models fail to infer the need for communicative efficiency from a more implicit prompt, highlighting critical differences between how humans and AI systems communicate.
Subjects: Computation and Language (cs.CL); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
Cite as: arXiv:2606.17372 [cs.CL]
  (or arXiv:2606.17372v1 [cs.CL] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.17372
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Submission history

From: Peter Zeng [view email]
[v1] Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:05:56 UTC (11,185 KB)
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