从检索到识别：视觉-语言模型如何成为 OCR 专家

Computer Science > Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition arXiv:2609.21543 (cs) [Submitted on 18 Sep 2026] Title:From Retrieval to Recognition:How Vision--Language Models Become OCR Specialists Authors:Yuanxiang Huangfu, Hanmeng Zhong, Linqing Chen, Jeffrey Tiong Jee Hui View a PDF of the paper titled From Retrieval to Recognition:How Vision--Language Models Become OCR Specialists, by Yuanxiang Huangfu and 3 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Does a general vision--language model acquire specialized OCR ability by developing a new reading circuit or by reusing an existing mechanism? We address this question in the setting of full-sequence OCR, rather than local-answer retrieval. Using an evidence-grounded protocol with held-out causal interventions, we identify sparse and stable OCR-head sets in GLM-OCR, MinerU2.5, and PaddleOCR-VL-1.6. We then investigate the mechanistic origin of these OCR heads by comparing them with independently identified textual retrieval/copy heads in general VLMs. Across two general VLMs, visual OCR heads strongly overlap independently identified textual retrieval/copy heads, yielding untuned top-20 intersections of 73.3% and all-head Spearman correlations of 0.677-0.886. The overlap and causal interventions suggest that full-sequence OCR operates as dense sequential multimodal copy-and-paste, repeatedly retrieving visual evidence and routing it to the current output position. Finally, we examine how this shared circuit changes as a general VLM becomes an OCR specialist. Matched base-to-specialized comparisons show that OCR specialization largely preserves head identity, retaining 17-20 of the top 20 heads per task with all-head rank correlations of 0.874-0.942, while redistributing their functional and causal strengths. Subjects: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV) Cite as: arXiv:2609.21543 [cs.CV] (or arXiv:2609.21543v1 [cs.CV] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.21543 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Yuanxiang Huangfu [view email] [v1] Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:32:37 UTC (586 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled From Retrieval to Recognition:How Vision--Language Models Become OCR Specialists, by Yuanxiang Huangfu and 3 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Current browse context: cs.CV new | recent | 2026-09 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)