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Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated exceptional abilities across a broad range of language-related tasks, including generating solutions to complex reasoning problems. An effective technique to enhance LLM performance is…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-12-25 Shuzhang Cai , Twumasi Mensah-Boateng , Xander Kuksov , Jing Yuan , Shaojie Tang

We study how large language models (LLMs) reason about memorized knowledge through simple binary relations such as equality ($=$), inequality ($<$), and inclusion ($\subset$). Unlike in-context reasoning, the axioms (e.g., $a < b, b < c$)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-18 Jonathan Shaki , Emanuele La Malfa , Michael Wooldridge , Sarit Kraus

Recent studies on transformer-based language models show that they can answer questions by reasoning over knowledge provided as part of the context (i.e., in-context reasoning). However, since the available knowledge is often not filtered…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-11-07 Zeming Chen , Gail Weiss , Eric Mitchell , Asli Celikyilmaz , Antoine Bosselut

Understanding context is key to understanding human language, an ability which Large Language Models (LLMs) have been increasingly seen to demonstrate to an impressive extent. However, though the evaluation of LLMs encompasses various…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-02-02 Yilun Zhu , Joel Ruben Antony Moniz , Shruti Bhargava , Jiarui Lu , Dhivya Piraviperumal , Site Li , Yuan Zhang , Hong Yu , Bo-Hsiang Tseng

In-context Learning (ICL) has emerged as a powerful capability alongside the development of scaled-up large language models (LLMs). By instructing LLMs using few-shot demonstrative examples, ICL enables them to perform a wide range of tasks…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-07-24 Quanyu Long , Yin Wu , Wenya Wang , Sinno Jialin Pan

Language models (LMs) are pre-trained on raw text datasets to generate text sequences token-by-token. While this approach facilitates the learning of world knowledge and reasoning, it does not explicitly optimize for linguistic competence.…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-17 Atsuki Yamaguchi , Maggie Mi , Nikolaos Aletras

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to solve complex tasks where they must retrieve and compose many pieces of in-context information in long reasoning chains. For many real-world tasks it is hard to accurately gauge how…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-29 Jackson Petty , Michael Y. Hu , Wentao Wang , Shauli Ravfogel , William Merrill , Tal Linzen

Adapting one's thought process based on corrective feedback is an essential ability in human learning, particularly in collaborative settings. In contrast, the current large language model training paradigm relies heavily on modeling vast,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-19 Martin Klissarov , Jonathan Cook , Diego Antognini , Hao Sun , Jingling Li , Natasha Jaques , Claudiu Musat , Edward Grefenstette

We investigate the mechanisms that arise when transformers are trained to solve arithmetic on sequences where tokens are variables whose meaning is determined only through their interactions in-context. While prior work has studied…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-02-26 Eric Todd , Jannik Brinkmann , Rohit Gandikota , David Bau

Transformer-based language models exhibit In-Context Learning (ICL), where predictions are made adaptively based on context. While prior work links induction heads to ICL through a sudden jump in accuracy, this can only account for ICL when…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-11 Gouki Minegishi , Hiroki Furuta , Shohei Taniguchi , Yusuke Iwasawa , Yutaka Matsuo

Showing incorrect answers to Large Language Models (LLMs) is a popular strategy to improve their performance in reasoning-intensive tasks. It is widely assumed that, in order to be helpful, the incorrect answers must be accompanied by…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-23 Lisa Alazraki , Maximilian Mozes , Jon Ander Campos , Tan Yi-Chern , Marek Rei , Max Bartolo

Large language models (LLMs) trained on huge corpora of text datasets demonstrate intriguing capabilities, achieving state-of-the-art performance on tasks they were not explicitly trained for. The precise nature of LLM capabilities is often…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-04-17 Eric J. Bigelow , Ekdeep Singh Lubana , Robert P. Dick , Hidenori Tanaka , Tomer D. Ullman

The Neural Contextual Reinforcement Framework introduces an innovative approach to enhancing the logical coherence and structural consistency of text generated by large language models. Leveraging reinforcement learning principles, the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-08-11 Marcus Irvin , William Cooper , Edward Hughes , Jessica Morgan , Christopher Hamilton

Progress in long-context reasoning for large language models (LLMs) has lagged behind other recent advances. This gap arises not only from the intrinsic difficulty of processing long texts, but also from the scarcity of reliable human…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-16 Ziyi Yang , Weizhou Shen , Chenliang Li , Ruijun Chen , Fanqi Wan , Ming Yan , Xiaojun Quan , Fei Huang

In-context learning (ICL) refers to a remarkable capability of pretrained large language models, which can learn a new task given a few examples during inference. However, theoretical understanding of ICL is largely under-explored,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-27 Tong Yang , Yu Huang , Yingbin Liang , Yuejie Chi

In everyday conversations, humans can take on different roles and adapt their vocabulary to their chosen roles. We explore whether LLMs can take on, that is impersonate, different roles when they generate text in-context. We ask LLMs to…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-11-28 Leonard Salewski , Stephan Alaniz , Isabel Rio-Torto , Eric Schulz , Zeynep Akata

Large language models (LMs) are able to in-context learn -- perform a new task via inference alone by conditioning on a few input-label pairs (demonstrations) and making predictions for new inputs. However, there has been little…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2022-10-21 Sewon Min , Xinxi Lyu , Ari Holtzman , Mikel Artetxe , Mike Lewis , Hannaneh Hajishirzi , Luke Zettlemoyer

We aim to better understand the emergence of `situational awareness' in large language models (LLMs). A model is situationally aware if it's aware that it's a model and can recognize whether it's currently in testing or deployment. Today's…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-09-06 Lukas Berglund , Asa Cooper Stickland , Mikita Balesni , Max Kaufmann , Meg Tong , Tomasz Korbak , Daniel Kokotajlo , Owain Evans

Central to many self-improvement pipelines for large language models (LLMs) is the assumption that models can improve by reflecting on past mistakes. We study a phenomenon termed contextual drag: the presence of failed attempts in the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-04 Yun Cheng , Xingyu Zhu , Haoyu Zhao , Sanjeev Arora

Human listeners readily adjust to unfamiliar speakers and language varieties through exposure, but do these adaptation benefits extend to state-of-the-art spoken language models? We introduce a scalable framework that allows for in-context…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-05-22 Nathan Roll , Calbert Graham , Yuka Tatsumi , Kim Tien Nguyen , Meghan Sumner , Dan Jurafsky