Deep Search with Hierarchical Meta-Cognitive Monitoring Inspired by Cognitive Neuroscience
Abstract
Deep search agents powered by large language models have demonstrated strong capabilities in multi-step retrieval, reasoning, and long-horizon task execution. However, their practical failures often stem from the lack of mechanisms to monitor and regulate reasoning and retrieval states as tasks evolve. Insights from cognitive neuroscience suggest that human metacognition is hierarchically organized, integrating fast anomaly detection with selectively triggered, experience-driven reflection. In this work, we propose Deep Search with Meta-Cognitive Monitoring (DS-MCM), a deep search framework augmented with an explicit hierarchical metacognitive monitoring mechanism. DS-MCM integrates a Fast Consistency Monitor, which performs lightweight checks on the alignment between external evidence and internal reasoning confidence, and a Slow Experience-Driven Monitor, which is selectively activated to guide corrective intervention based on experience memory from historical agent trajectories. By embedding monitoring directly into the reasoning–retrieval loop, DS-MCM determines both when intervention is warranted and how corrective actions should be informed by prior experience. Experiments across multiple deep search benchmarks and backbone models demonstrate that DS-MCM consistently improves performance and robustness.
Assigned reviewers
| # | Reviewer | Match | Why (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wenlin Zhang 0001 | 50 | 100 MemSearch-o1: Empowering Large Language Models with Reasoning-Aligned Memory Growth in Agentic Search (2026) Agentic and Deep Search RAG 87 To Search or Not to Search: Aligning the Decision Boundary of Deep Search Agents via Causal Intervention (2026) Agentic and Deep Search RAG 72 Process vs. Outcome Reward: Which is Better for Agentic RAG Reinforcement Learning (2025) Agentic and Deep Search RAG |
|
| 2 | Yingyi Zhang 0001 | 47 | 100 MemSearch-o1: Empowering Large Language Models with Reasoning-Aligned Memory Growth in Agentic Search (2026) Agentic and Deep Search RAG 73 To Search or Not to Search: Aligning the Decision Boundary of Deep Search Agents via Causal Intervention (2026) Agentic and Deep Search RAG 72 Process vs. Outcome Reward: Which is Better for Agentic RAG Reinforcement Learning (2025) Agentic and Deep Search RAG |
Area chair
| Area chair | Match | |
|---|---|---|
| Xiaoxi Li 0005 | 51 |
Area-chair candidates (6)
| Xiaoxi Li 0005 assigned | 51 | 15 papers | |
| Hongjin Qian | 42 | 12 papers | |
| Pengyue Jia | 38 | 10 papers | |
| Dacheng Tao | 38 | 5 papers | |
| Jun Xu 0001 COI: author | 38 | 2 papers | |
| Xiaoxue Zang COI: co-author | 37 | 4 papers |
Candidates from the panel ranked by match score
| # | Reviewer | Match | Load | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jialong Wu 0007 | 56 | 3 | 75 WebDancer: Towards Autonomous Information Seeking Agency (2025) Deep Research and Report Generation 75 Nested Browser-Use Learning for Agentic Information Seeking (2026) Deep Research and Report Generation |
|
| 3 | Wenlin Zhang 0001 assigned | 50 | 3 | 100 MemSearch-o1: Empowering Large Language Models with Reasoning-Aligned Memory Growth in Agentic Search (2026) Agentic and Deep Search RAG 87 To Search or Not to Search: Aligning the Decision Boundary of Deep Search Agents via Causal Intervention (2026) Agentic and Deep Search RAG |
|
| 4 | Yingyi Zhang 0001 assigned | 47 | 3 | 100 MemSearch-o1: Empowering Large Language Models with Reasoning-Aligned Memory Growth in Agentic Search (2026) Agentic and Deep Search RAG 73 To Search or Not to Search: Aligning the Decision Boundary of Deep Search Agents via Causal Intervention (2026) Agentic and Deep Search RAG |
|
| 5 | Kaixin Ma | 43 | 3 | 60 Retrieval-augmented GUI Agents with Generative Guidelines (2025) Agentic and Deep Search RAG 49 WebEvolver: Enhancing Web Agent Self-Improvement with Co-evolving World Model (2025) RL Training of Search Agents |
|
| 6 | Farzad Shami | 42 | 3 | 48 GROKE: Vision-Free Navigation Instruction Evaluation via Graph Reasoning on OpenStreetMap (2026) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks 40 Benchmarking Large Language Models for Knowledge Graph Validation (2026) KG-Augmented LLM Reasoning |
|
| 8 | Wonduk Seo | 42 | 3 | 48 Automated Visualization Code Synthesis via Multi-path Reasoning and Feedback-Driven Optimizations (2026) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks 48 SPIO: Ensemble and Selective Strategies via LLM-Based Multi-Agent Planning in Automated Data Science (2026) Multi-Agent and Tool-Use Orchestration |
|
| 9 | Yu Gu 0016 | 41 | 3 | 75 Mind2Web 2: Evaluating Agentic Search with Agent-as-a-Judge (2025) Deep Research and Report Generation 48 AgentBench: Evaluating LLMs as Agents (2024) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks |
|
| 10 | Haritz Puerto | 41 | 3 | 45 MetaQA: Combining Expert Agents for Multi-Skill Question Answering (2023) Retrieval-Augmented and Open-Domain QA 44 Fine-Tuning on Diverse Reasoning Chains Drives Within-Inference CoT Refinement in LLMs (2025) Reward Modeling and Process Supervision |
|
| 11 | Weiwei Sun 0001 | 41 | 3 | 73 Improving Retrieval-Augmented Generation through Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (2025) Agentic and Deep Search RAG 44 ReasonRank: Empowering Passage Ranking with Strong Reasoning Ability (2026) LLM-Based Reranking |
|
| 12 | Xingyu Tan 0001 | 40 | 3 | 42 Paths-over-Graph: Knowledge Graph Empowered Large Language Model Reasoning (2025) KG-Augmented LLM Reasoning 42 MemoTime: Memory-Augmented Temporal Knowledge Graph Enhanced Large Language Model Reasoning (2026) KG-Augmented LLM Reasoning |
|
| 13 | Chen Zhao 0013 | 40 | 3 | 75 Beyond Single-shot Writing: Deep Research Agents are Unreliable at Multi-turn Report Revision (2026) Deep Research and Report Generation 43 SportReason: Evaluating Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning across Tables and Text for Sports Question Answering (2025) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning |
|
| 14 | Xi Ye 0003 | 39 | 3 | 75 Beyond Single-shot Writing: Deep Research Agents are Unreliable at Multi-turn Report Revision (2026) Deep Research and Report Generation 48 MuSR: Testing the Limits of Chain-of-thought with Multistep Soft Reasoning (2024) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks |
|
| 15 | Yuchen Li 0006 | 39 | 3 | 61 Retain to Refine: Adaptive Online Question Answering via Query Routing and Long-Short Memory (2026) Agentic and Deep Search RAG 43 Enhancing Retrieval-Augmented Generation via Evidence Tree Search (2025) Evidence Selection and Context Refinement |
|
| 16 | Qinggang Zhang | 39 | 3 | 43 You Don't Need Pre-Built Graphs for RAG: Retrieval Augmented Generation with Adaptive Reasoning Structures (2026) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning 41 KnowGPT: Knowledge Graph based Prompting for Large Language Models (2024) Multimodal and Graph RAG |
|
| 17 | Archiki Prasad | 38 | 3 | 48 ReCEval: Evaluating Reasoning Chains via Correctness and Informativeness (2023) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks 46 MAgICoRe: Multi-Agent, Iterative, Coarse-to-Fine Refinement for Reasoning (2025) Reward Modeling and Process Supervision |
|
| 19 | Daiting Shi | 38 | 3 | 49 Reinforced Efficient Reasoning via Semantically Diverse Exploration (2026) RL Training of Search Agents 44 ReflectRM: Boosting Generative Reward Models via Self-Reflection within a Unified Judgment Framework (2026) Reward Modeling and Process Supervision |
|
| 21 | Wenyu Huang | 38 | 3 | 42 Prompting large language models with knowledge graphs for question answering involving long-tail facts (2025) KG-Augmented LLM Reasoning 41 Masking in Multi-hop QA: An Analysis of How Language Models Perform with Context Permutation (2025) Multi-hop and Complex Reasoning QA |
|
| 22 | Xinyu Ma 0001 | 38 | 3 | 73 Improving Retrieval-Augmented Generation through Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (2025) Agentic and Deep Search RAG 44 ReasonRank: Empowering Passage Ranking with Strong Reasoning Ability (2026) LLM-Based Reranking |
|
| 24 | Armin Toroghi | 38 | 3 | 40 LLM-based Typed Hyperresolution for Commonsense Reasoning with Knowledge Bases (2025) KG-Augmented LLM Reasoning 40 Verifiable, Debuggable, and Repairable Commonsense Logical Reasoning via LLM-based Theory Resolution (2024) KG-Augmented LLM Reasoning |
|
| 25 | Shuaiqiang Wang COI: co-author | 38 | 3 | 47 Improving Retrieval-Augmented Generation through Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (2025) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning 45 Thinking Forward and Backward: Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning for Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning (2026) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning |
|
| 26 | Ori Yoran | 38 | 3 | 48 AssistantBench: Can Web Agents Solve Realistic and Time-Consuming Tasks? (2024) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks 45 Answering Questions by Meta-Reasoning over Multiple Chains of Thought (2023) Reasoning-Intensive Retrieval and Ranking |
|
| 27 | Mariano Barone | 38 | 3 | 45 SOLVE-Med: Specialized Orchestration for Leading Vertical Experts Across Medical Specialties (2025) Retrieval-Augmented and Open-Domain QA 40 Combating Biomedical Misinformation through Multi-modal Claim Detection and Evidence-based Verification (2025) RAG for Domain Applications |
|
| 28 | Ben Liu 0002 | 38 | 3 | 47 MoodAngels: A Retrieval-augmented Multi-agent Framework for Psychiatry Diagnosis (2025) RAG for Domain Applications 44 Plan Then Retrieve: Reinforcement Learning-Guided Complex Reasoning over Knowledge Graphs (2026) RL Training of Search Agents |
|
| 29 | Yujia Zhou 0002 | 38 | 3 | 43 RetroLLM: Empowering Large Language Models to Retrieve Fine-grained Evidence within Generation (2025) Evidence Selection and Context Refinement 43 CorpusLM: Towards a Unified Language Model on Corpus for Knowledge-Intensive Tasks (2024) Generative Retrieval |
|
| 30 | Farima Fatahi Bayat | 38 | 3 | 46 From Proof to Program: Characterizing Tool-Induced Reasoning Hallucinations in Large Language Models (2026) Reward Modeling and Process Supervision 35 Enhancing Language Model Factuality via Activation-Based Confidence Calibration and Guided Decoding (2024) Automated Fact Checking and Claim Verification |
|
| 31 | Qingyi Si | 38 | 3 | 45 S-GRPO: Early Exit via Reinforcement Learning in Reasoning Models (2025) Reward Modeling and Process Supervision 44 Test-time Prompt Intervention (2026) Reward Modeling and Process Supervision |
|
| 32 | Keqin Bao | 37 | 3 | 48 MTR-Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Multi-Turn Reasoning Evaluation (2026) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks 48 Teaching Language Models to Reason with Tools (2025) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks |
|
| 33 | Jiapu Wang | 37 | 3 | 44 Large Language Models-guided Dynamic Adaptation for Temporal Knowledge Graph Reasoning (2024) RL Training of Search Agents 43 Atomic Fact Decomposition Helps Attributed Question Answering (2025) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning |
|
| 35 | Yongqi Li 0001 | 37 | 3 | 44 Parallel Test-Time Scaling for Latent Reasoning Models (2026) Reward Modeling and Process Supervision 44 TokenSkip: Controllable Chain-of-Thought Compression in LLMs (2025) Reward Modeling and Process Supervision |
|
| 36 | Yong Li 0004 | 37 | 3 | 59 PG-Agent: An Agent Powered by Page Graph (2025) Multi-Agent and Tool-Use Orchestration 48 ProBench: Benchmarking GUI Agents with Accurate Process Information (2026) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks |