Learning to Draw ASCII Improves Spatial Reasoning in Language Models

People sketch to reason about space. We ask whether language models can do the same, and find that LLMs read ASCII layouts better than they draw them, and that training a model only to draw these layouts improves its spatial reasoning from text alone.

Dates: September 2025 – September 2026

Venue: COLM 2026

Animated ASCII sketch demonstrating spatial reasoning in language models.

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