The paper introduces Integrated Policy Gradient (IPG), a training‑free framework that applies policy‑based attribution to large language model reasoning. IPG backpropagates outcome‑level, non‑differentiable signals through entire inference trajectories, using path integration to isolate outcome‑relevant mediators at the component level. Empirical results show that IPG precisely localizes sparse internal components linked to specific reasoning behaviors and enables modulation of reasoning capabilities.
arXiv:2602. 20094v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: As large language models (LLMs) witness increasing deployment in complex, high-stakes decision-making scenarios, it becomes imperative to ground their reasoning in causality rather than spurious correlations.
The paper introduces DCFA, a training‑free framework for attributing failures in large language model‑based multi‑agent systems. DCFA uses a global module to build causal‑inspired dependency graphs from system traces, pinpointing the earliest decisive error, and a local module that refines this attribution through counterfactual reasoning. Experiments on the Who&When benchmark across six LLMs demonstrate that DCFA improves step‑level accuracy by up to 8.27% over existing baselines.
arXiv:2606. 01243v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Latent reasoning enables Large Language Models (LLMs) to perform multi-step inference within continuous hidden states, offering efficiency gains over explicit Chain-of-Thought (CoT).
arXiv:2404.06349v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The ability to understand causality significantly impacts the competence of large language models (LLMs) in output explanation and counterfactual r...
arXiv:2510. 27544v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Current training paradigms, optimized for long-horizon reasoning trace execution, have made Large Language Models (LLMs) excel at pattern matching and forward simulation of reasoning, but underperform at counterfactual causal understanding and reasoning.
arXiv:2510. 13554v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The reasoning pattern of Large language models (LLMs) remains opaque, and reinforcement learning (RL) typically applies uniform credit across an entire generation, blurring the distinction between pivotal and routine steps.
arXiv:2602. 06337v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Causal inference is essential for decision-making but remains challenging for non-experts.
Matryoshka Attribution (MAttr) is a mask‑learning method that identifies nested subsets of a language model’s internal components by minimizing downstream loss. It uses a differentiable sigmoid top‑k operator and randomizes sparsity during training to produce an attribution ordering of components. MAttr tops the Mechanistic Interpretability Benchmark leaderboard and can be applied via reinforcement learning to pinpoint weight changes that control behaviors such as refusal in Llama 3.1 8B Instruct, where restoring just 1% of weights removes refusals while preserving capabilities.
arXiv:2606. 05972v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Causal graphs provide a high-level language for making mechanisms transparent.
arXiv:2607. 15281v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Causal and intervention-based question answering is fundamental to advancing large language models (LLMs) toward reasoning beyond surface-level correlations and understanding underlying causal mechanisms.
arXiv:2606. 05402v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large reasoning models (LRMs) produce reasoning traces with non-linear structures, such as backtracking and self-correction, that complicate the evaluation and monitoring of the reasoning process.
arXiv:2607. 18100v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Extended reasoning has become standard for frontier Large Language Models (LLMs), yet the trajectories these models produce remain largely uncontrollable.