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Related papers: Lost at the Beginning of Reasoning

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Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting has improved the reasoning performance of large language models (LLMs), but it remains unclear why it works and whether it is the unique mechanism for triggering reasoning in large language models. In this…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-01-14 Zhenghao He , Guangzhi Xiong , Bohan Liu , Sanchit Sinha , Aidong Zhang

Recent reasoning large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable improvements in mathematical reasoning capabilities through long Chain-of-Thought. The reasoning tokens of these models enable self-correction within reasoning…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-04-02 Yu Cui , Bryan Hooi , Yujun Cai , Yiwei Wang

The chain-of-thought (CoT) paradigm uses the elicitation of step-by-step rationales as a proxy for reasoning, gradually refining the model's latent representation of a solution. However, it remains unclear just how early a Large Language…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-11-20 Joey David

Long chain-of-thought (CoT) significantly enhances the reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs). However, extensive reasoning traces lead to inefficiencies and increased time-to-first-token (TTFT). We propose a training…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-01-08 Roy Xie , David Qiu , Deepak Gopinath , Dong Lin , Yanchao Sun , Chong Wang , Saloni Potdar , Bhuwan Dhingra

Thinking Large Language Models (LLMs) generate explicit intermediate reasoning traces before final answers, potentially improving transparency, interpretability, and solution accuracy for code generation. However, the quality of these…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-11-11 Haoran Xue , Gias Uddin , Song Wang

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown impressive performance on complex tasks through Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning. However, conventional CoT relies on explicitly verbalized intermediate steps, which constrains its broader…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-11-04 Xinghao Chen , Anhao Zhao , Heming Xia , Xuan Lu , Hanlin Wang , Yanjun Chen , Wei Zhang , Jian Wang , Wenjie Li , Xiaoyu Shen

Large Language Models (LLMs) often exhibit strong linguistic abilities while remaining unreliable on multi-step reasoning tasks, particularly when deployed without additional training or fine-tuning. In this work, we study inference-time…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-24 Vinay Sharma , Manish Jain

Recent years have witnessed significant progress in large language models' (LLMs) reasoning, which is largely due to the chain-of-thought (CoT) approaches, allowing models to generate intermediate reasoning steps before reaching the final…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-04-15 Zuoli Tang , Junjie Ou , Kaiqin Hu , Chunwei Wu , Zhaoxin Huan , Chilin Fu , Xiaolu Zhang , Jun Zhou , Chenliang Li

Reasoning is a fundamental aspect of human intelligence that plays a crucial role in activities such as problem solving, decision making, and critical thinking. In recent years, large language models (LLMs) have made significant progress in…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-05-29 Jie Huang , Kevin Chen-Chuan Chang

Scaling inference compute enhances reasoning in large language models (LLMs), with long chains-of-thought (CoTs) enabling strategies like backtracking and error correction. Reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a crucial method for…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-02-06 Edward Yeo , Yuxuan Tong , Morry Niu , Graham Neubig , Xiang Yue

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in tasks requiring reasoning and multi-step problem-solving through the use of chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting. However, generating the full CoT process results in…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-09-16 Tianqiao Liu , Zui Chen , Zitao Liu , Mi Tian , Weiqi Luo

This is the second in a series of short reports that seek to help business, education, and policy leaders understand the technical details of working with AI through rigorous testing. In this report, we investigate Chain-of-Thought (CoT)…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-10 Lennart Meincke , Ethan Mollick , Lilach Mollick , Dan Shapiro

Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have significantly enhanced their ability to perform complex reasoning tasks, transitioning from fast and intuitive thinking (System 1) to slow and deep reasoning (System 2). While System…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-04-01 Rui Wang , Hongru Wang , Boyang Xue , Jianhui Pang , Shudong Liu , Yi Chen , Jiahao Qiu , Derek Fai Wong , Heng Ji , Kam-Fai Wong

In recent years, large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated significant potential in complex reasoning tasks like mathematical problem-solving. However, existing research predominantly relies on reinforcement learning (RL) frameworks…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-12 ShaoZhen Liu , Xinting Huang , Houwen Peng , Xin Chen , Xinyang Song , Qi Li , Zhenan Sun

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive mathematical reasoning capabilities, yet their performance remains brittle to minor variations in problem description and prompting strategy. Furthermore, reasoning is vulnerable to…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-23 Sam Silver , Jimin Sun , Ivan Zhang , Sara Hooker , Eddie Kim

Pretrained large language models (LLMs) are widely used in many sub-fields of natural language processing (NLP) and generally known as excellent few-shot learners with task-specific exemplars. Notably, chain of thought (CoT) prompting, a…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-01-31 Takeshi Kojima , Shixiang Shane Gu , Machel Reid , Yutaka Matsuo , Yusuke Iwasawa

The integration of slow-thinking mechanisms into large language models (LLMs) offers a promising way toward achieving Level 2 AGI Reasoners, as exemplified by systems like OpenAI's o1. However, several significant challenges remain,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-02-10 Xiao-Wen Yang , Xuan-Yi Zhu , Wen-Da Wei , Ding-Chu Zhang , Jie-Jing Shao , Zhi Zhou , Lan-Zhe Guo , Yu-Feng Li

Reasoning is a cognitive process of using evidence to reach a sound conclusion. The reasoning capability is essential for large language models (LLMs) to serve as the brain of the artificial general intelligence agent. Recent studies reveal…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-09-06 Peiyi Wang , Lei Li , Liang Chen , Feifan Song , Binghuai Lin , Yunbo Cao , Tianyu Liu , Zhifang Sui

Language has long been conceived as an essential tool for human reasoning. The breakthrough of Large Language Models (LLMs) has sparked significant research interest in leveraging these models to tackle complex reasoning tasks. Researchers…

Training on large amounts of rationales (i.e., CoT Fine-tuning) is effective at improving the reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs). However, acquiring human-authored rationales or augmenting rationales from proprietary…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-04 Hyeonbin Hwang , Doyoung Kim , Seungone Kim , Seonghyeon Ye , Minjoon Seo