In-context learning (ICL) enables Large Language Models (LLMs) to adapt to new tasks using few examples, with task vectors - specific hidden state activations - hypothesized to encode task information. Existing studies are limited by small-scale benchmarks, restricting comprehensive analysis. We introduce QuiteAFew, a novel dataset of 3,096 diverse few-shot tasks, each with 30 input-output pairs derived from the Alpaca dataset. Experiments with Llama-3-8B on QuiteAFew reveal: (1) task vector performance peaks at an intermediate layer (e.g., 15th), (2) effectiveness varies significantly by task type, and (3) complex tasks rely on multiple, subtask-specific vectors rather than a single vector, suggesting distributed task knowledge representation.
@article{arxiv.2505.23911,
title = {One Task Vector is not Enough: A Large-Scale Study for In-Context Learning},
author = {Pavel Tikhonov and Ivan Oseledets and Elena Tutubalina},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.23911},
year = {2025}
}