The paper investigates whether different forms of intermediate computation in large language models—such as token-based traces, pause tokens, and latent reasoning—rely on the same underlying mechanism. By training five variants of GPTNeoX on an extended multi-hop reasoning task, the authors find that while vanilla, Chain-of-Thought, and Pause Token models perform well on in-distribution data, they fail to generalize to longer-hop out-of-distribution problems. In contrast, latent-reasoning models exhibit better depth generalization, with causal analysis revealing a sparse recurrent search circuit that implements forward reachability propagation across the graph.
arXiv:2604. 07822v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We study implicit reasoning, i.
By Harsh Kohli, Srinivasan Parthasarathy, Huan Sun, Yuekun Yao
The paper investigates whether extra computation in recurrent Transformers should be allocated to more temporal steps or greater physical depth. Using Latent Recurrent Transformers (LRTs), the authors insert a latent thought token between vocabulary tokens, allowing each token to pass through the same $L$ layers twice while sharing parameters. Experiments on 16‑ and 20‑layer mixture‑of‑experts NanoChat backbones show that a single thought token brings a shallower model within 0.006–0.004 bits per byte of a double‑depth counterpart, recovering 67–81% of the improvement with roughly 48% fewer parameters.
By Zeyi Huang, Xuehai He, Yong Jae Lee, Yelong Shen
The paper investigates how different forms of compressed chain‑of‑thought (CoT) reasoning—Explicit, Composed, and Implicit—affect large language model (LLM) performance after supervised fine‑tuning (SFT). Using a synthetic compositional reasoning task, the authors show that coarser CoT requires more SFT data, that Composed and Implicit CoT benefit more from data scaling (with Composed also benefiting from repetition), and that reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) can decompose compressed steps learned during SFT. Additionally, unidirectional CoT ordering improves generalization on longer sequential tasks.
By Kohsei Matsutani, Gouki Minegishi, Takeshi Kojima, Yusuke Iwasawa, Yutaka Matsuo
arXiv:2607. 00341v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models achieve strong performance on many reasoning tasks when allowed to externalize intermediate steps as Chain-of-Thought (CoT).
By Hengyu Fu, Tianyu Guo, Zixuan Wang, Hanlin Zhu, Jason D. Lee, Jiantao Jiao, Stuart Russell, Song Mei
arXiv:2609.39967v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Recursive reasoning models apply a small shared Transformer block many times to refine a latent state. This gives them large effective depth with few...
By Yuliana Shakhvalieva, Dmitrii Kharchev, Viacheslav Bezrukov, Inessa Fedorova, Dmitry Bocharov, Ivan Oseledets, Valerii Ternovskii
Recursive reasoning models apply a small shared Transformer block many times to refine a latent state. This gives them large effective depth with few parameters and makes them strong on algorithmic ta...
arXiv:2511.08577v4 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Improving the reasoning abilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), especially under parameter constraints, is crucial for real-world applicat...
By Tianyu Fu, Yichen You, Zekai Chen, Guohao Dai, Huazhong Yang, Yu Wang
arXiv:2509.14093v3 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting can substantially improve the reasoning ability of large language models (LLMs), but it often comes with hig...
By Kerui Huang, Shuhan Liu, Xing Hu, Tongtong Xu, Lingfeng Bao, Xin Xia
arXiv:2511. 08577v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Improving the reasoning abilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), especially under parameter constraints, is crucial for real-world applications.
By Tianyu Fu, Yichen You, Zekai Chen, Guohao Dai, Huazhong Yang, Yu Wang
arXiv:2607. 25915v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Complex structured reasoning tasks often require additional computation, yet current language models obtain it mainly by increasing parameter scale or by serializing intermediate steps as chain-of-thought (CoT) tokens.
By Yutong Chen, Shouqian Shi, Xinran Liu, Haochen Wang, Jiaying Wang, Tianxing Xu, Yuanxi Wang, Zirui Ding
arXiv:2505. 12992v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Inference-time scaling techniques have significantly bolstered the reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs) by harnessing additional computational effort at inference without retraining.
By Baohao Liao, Hanze Dong, Yuhui Xu, Doyen Sahoo, Christof Monz, Junnan Li, Caiming Xiong