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In-context learning (ICL) enables large language models (LLMs) to adapt to new tasks without weight updates by learning from demonstration sequences. While ICL shows strong empirical performance, its internal representational mechanisms are…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Jiachen Jiang , Yuxin Dong , Jinxin Zhou , Zhihui Zhu

Large language model (LLM) performance on reasoning problems typically does not generalize out of distribution. Previous work has claimed that this can be mitigated with chain of thought prompting-a method of demonstrating solution…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-03-13 Kaya Stechly , Karthik Valmeekam , Subbarao Kambhampati

Large Language Models (LLMs) have showcased their In-Context Learning (ICL) capabilities, enabling few-shot learning without the need for gradient updates. Despite its advantages, the effectiveness of ICL heavily depends on the choice of…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-19 Vinay M. S. , Minh-Hao Van , Xintao Wu

Large language models (LLMs) can learn from a few demonstrations provided at inference time. We study this in-context learning phenomenon through the lens of Gaussian Processes (GPs). We build controlled experiments where models observe…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-13 Elif Akata , Konstantinos Voudouris , Vincent Fortuin , Eric Schulz

We investigate the generalization boundaries of current Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) via comprehensive evaluation under out-of-distribution scenarios and domain-specific tasks. We evaluate their zero-shot generalization across…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2024-02-12 Xingxuan Zhang , Jiansheng Li , Wenjing Chu , Junjia Hai , Renzhe Xu , Yuqing Yang , Shikai Guan , Jiazheng Xu , Peng Cui

Advancements in large language models (LLMs) have shown their effectiveness in multiple complicated natural language reasoning tasks. A key challenge remains in adapting these models efficiently to new or unfamiliar tasks. In-context…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-08-02 Siqi Liang , Sumyeong Ahn , Jiayu Zhou

We perform in-depth evaluations of in-context learning (ICL) on state-of-the-art transformer, state-space, and hybrid large language models over two categories of knowledge-based ICL tasks. Using a combination of behavioral probing and…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-02 Shenran Wang , Timothy Tin-Long Tse , Jian Zhu

Demonstration ordering, which is an important strategy for in-context learning (ICL), can significantly affects the performance of large language models (LLMs). However, most of the current approaches of ordering require high computational…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-18 Yinpeng Liu , Jiawei Liu , Xiang Shi , Qikai Cheng , Yong Huang , Wei Lu

Transformer models, notably large language models (LLMs), have the remarkable ability to perform in-context learning (ICL) -- to perform new tasks when prompted with unseen input-output examples without any explicit model training. In this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-03 Steve Yadlowsky , Lyric Doshi , Nilesh Tripuraneni

By simply incorporating demonstrations into the context, in-context learning (ICL) enables large language models (LLMs) to yield awesome performance on many tasks. In this study, we focus on passage-level long-context ICL for generation…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-09 Hao Sun , Chenming Tang , Gengyang Li , Yunfang Wu

Transformers exhibit In-Context Learning (ICL), where these models solve new tasks by using examples in the prompt without additional training. In our work, we identify and analyze two key components of ICL: (1) context-scaling, where model…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-17 Amirhesam Abedsoltan , Adityanarayanan Radhakrishnan , Jingfeng Wu , Mikhail Belkin

In-context learning (ICL) is the ability of a large language model (LLM) to learn a new task from a few demonstrations presented as part of the context. Past studies have attributed a large portion of the success of ICL to the way these…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-10 Ioana Marinescu , Kyunghyun Cho , Eric Karl Oermann

In-context Learning (ICL) is the ability of Large Language Models (LLMs) to perform new tasks when conditioned on prompts comprising a few task examples. However, ICL performance can be critically sensitive to the choice of examples. To…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-02-23 Shivanshu Gupta , Clemens Rosenbaum , Ethan R. Elenberg

We investigate training strategies that co-develop in-context learning (ICL) and in-weights learning (IWL), and the ability to switch between them based on context relevance. Although current LLMs exhibit both modes, standard task-specific…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-03 Deeptanshu Malu , Deevyanshu Malu , Aditya Nemiwal , Sunita Sarawagi

Large language models (LLMs) enable in-context learning (ICL) by conditioning on a few labeled training examples as a text-based prompt, eliminating the need for parameter updates and achieving competitive performance. In this paper, we…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-04-02 Jianing Wang , Chengyu Wang , Chuanqi Tan , Jun Huang , Ming Gao

With approximately 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, current large language models (LLMs) support only a small subset. Prior research indicates LLMs can learn new languages for certain tasks without supervised data. We extend this…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-01-29 Zhaolin Li , Jan Niehues

Large language models are able to learn new tasks in context, where they are provided with instructions and a few annotated examples. However, the effectiveness of in-context learning is dependent on the provided context, and the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-12-25 Afra Amini , Massimiliano Ciaramita

The remarkable capability of large language models (LLMs) for in-context learning (ICL) needs to be activated by demonstration examples. Prior work has extensively explored the selection of examples for ICL, predominantly following the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-07 Haoyu Liu , Jianfeng Liu , Shaohan Huang , Yuefeng Zhan , Hao Sun , Weiwei Deng , Furu Wei , Qi Zhang

This paper investigates context stickiness in in-context learning (ICL), a phenomenon where earlier examples in a prompt interfere with a transformer's ability to adapt to later tasks. Using synthetic regression tasks over linear and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Hanna Rød , Dagny Streit , Nils Valseth Selte , Justin Li

With the help of in-context learning (ICL), large language models (LLMs) have achieved impressive performance across various tasks. However, the function of descriptive instructions during ICL remains under-explored. In this work, we…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-09 Chenming Tang , Zhixiang Wang , Hao Sun , Yunfang Wu