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Chain-of-Thought (CoT), a step-wise and coherent reasoning chain, shows its impressive strength when used as a prompting strategy for large language models (LLM). Recent years, the prominent effect of CoT prompting has attracted emerging…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-10-10 Zihan Yu , Liang He , Zhen Wu , Xinyu Dai , Jiajun Chen

Large language models (LLMs) equipped with chain-of-thought (CoT) achieve strong performance and offer a window into LLM behavior. However, recent evidence suggests that improvements in CoT capabilities often come with redundant reasoning…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Yanrui Du , Sendong Zhao , Yibo Gao , Danyang Zhao , Qika Lin , Ming Ma , Jiayun Li , Yi Jiang , Kai He , Qianyi Xu , Bing Qin , Mengling Feng

This position paper argues that large language model (LLM) reasoning should be studied as latent-state trajectory formation rather than as faithful surface chain-of-thought (CoT). This matters because claims about faithfulness,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-20 Wenshuo Wang

We present the surprising finding that a language model's reasoning capabilities can be improved by training on synthetic datasets of chain-of-thought (CoT) traces from more capable models, even when all of those traces lead to an incorrect…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-26 Abhranil Chandra , Ayush Agrawal , Arian Hosseini , Sebastian Fischmeister , Rishabh Agarwal , Navin Goyal , Aaron Courville

As chain-of-thought (CoT) has become central to scaling reasoning capabilities in large language models (LLMs), it has also emerged as a promising tool for interpretability, suggesting the opportunity to understand model decisions through…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Kyle Cox , Darius Kianersi , Adrià Garriga-Alonso

Large Language Models (LLMs) often exhibit sycophantic behavior, agreeing with user-stated opinions even when those contradict factual knowledge. While prior work has documented this tendency, the internal mechanisms that enable such…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-11-13 Keyu Wang , Jin Li , Shu Yang , Zhuoran Zhang , Di Wang

Chain-of-thought (CoT) rationales, which provide step-by-step reasoning to derive final answers, benefit LLMs in both inference and training. Incorporating rationales, either by generating them before answering during inference, or by…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Wenhang Shi , Shuqing Bian , Yiren Chen , Xinyi Zhang , Zhe Zhao , Pengfei Hu , Wei Lu , Xiaoyong Du

Chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning is useful for monitoring language models only when the reasoning trace faithfully reflects the computation that produces the final answer. However, models can rely on prompt-to-answer shortcuts that bypass…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-26 Jinghan Jia , Joe Benton , Eric Easley

Large language models (LLMs) exhibiting test-time scaling behavior, such as extended reasoning traces and self-verification, have demonstrated remarkable performance on complex, long-term reasoning tasks. However, the robustness of these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Gleb Rodionov

Latent tokens are gaining attention for enhancing reasoning in large language models (LLMs), yet their internal mechanisms remain unclear. This paper examines the problem from a reliability perspective, uncovering fundamental weaknesses:…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-12-29 Yuyi Zhang , Boyu Tang , Tianjie Ju , Sufeng Duan , Gongshen Liu

Large Language Models (LLMs) are expected to provide helpful and harmless responses, yet they often exhibit sycophancy--conforming to user beliefs regardless of factual accuracy or ethical soundness. Prior research on sycophancy has…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-02 Jiseung Hong , Grace Byun , Seungone Kim , Kai Shu , Jinho D. Choi

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) empowers Large Language Models (LLMs) to tackle complex problems, but remains constrained by the computational cost and reasoning path collapse when grounded in discrete token spaces. Recent latent reasoning…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-05 Jiecong Wang , Hao Peng , Chunyang Liu

While Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting has become a cornerstone for complex reasoning in Large Language Models (LLMs), the faithfulness of the generated reasoning remains an open question. We investigate the Decoupling Hypothesis: that…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-06 Enyi Jiang , Changming Xu , Nischay Singh , Tian Qiu , Gagandeep Singh

In this paper, we investigate the degree to which fine-tuning in Large Language Models (LLMs) effectively mitigates versus merely conceals undesirable behavior. Through the lens of semi-realistic role-playing exercises designed to elicit…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-07-01 Florin Pop , Judd Rosenblatt , Diogo Schwerz de Lucena , Michael Vaiana

Chain of Thought (CoT) reasoning has demonstrated remarkable deep reasoning capabilities in both large language models (LLMs) and multimodal large language models (MLLMs). However, its reliability is often undermined by the accumulation of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-11-26 Zijun Chen , Wenbo Hu , Richang Hong

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

In-Context Learning (ICL) in Large Language Models (LLM) has emerged as the dominant technique for performing natural language tasks, as it does not require updating the model parameters with gradient-based methods. ICL promises to "adapt"…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-03-05 Georgios Chochlakis , Niyantha Maruthu Pandiyan , Kristina Lerman , Shrikanth Narayanan

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

While the recent Chain-of-Thought (CoT) technique enhances the reasoning ability of large language models (LLMs) with the theory of mind, it might still struggle in handling logical reasoning that relies much on symbolic expressions and…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-12 Jundong Xu , Hao Fei , Liangming Pan , Qian Liu , Mong-Li Lee , Wynne Hsu

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting has significantly improved the reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs). However, conventional CoT often relies on unstructured, flat reasoning chains that suffer from redundancy and suboptimal…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Xingshuai Huang , Derek Li , Bahareh Nikpour , Parsa Omidi