arXiv AI

Reasoning over Non-Parametric Memory in Multilingual LLMs: A Cognitive-Based Analysis of Relational Knowledge

The paper introduces “Rel-Bloom,” a multilingual diagnostic benchmark of 450 multiple-choice questions that tests language models’ ability to reason over relational facts supplied directly in prompts. It evaluates 43 models across six languages and two multilingual settings, revealing that accuracy drops sharply from Apply to Analyze levels, that Evaluate items remain a bottleneck even for high-performing models, and that difficulty rankings are consistent across languages. The study also finds that counterfactual contexts are generally harder than factual ones, and that removing entity identities can sometimes improve higher-level performance.

arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 10

Do LLMs Make More Mistakes If They Do Not Believe the Input Data?

The study investigates whether large language models (LLMs) are more prone to errors when they doubt the plausibility of input data, a phenomenon termed context‑memory conflict. Using non‑English and low‑resource language datasets, the authors generate text from factual, counterfactual, and fictional RDF triples in English, Czech, Slovak, and Upper Sorbian, and evaluate faithfulness with both human annotations and an LLM judge (Kimi K3). Contrary to expectations, the results show only a weak context‑memory conflict: counterfactual inputs receive slightly lower faithfulness scores than factual ones, and the choice of LLM judge can significantly affect perceived conflict strength.

By Peter Kochelka, Ale\v{s} Manuel Pap\'a\v{c}ek, Vojt\v{e}ch Dvo\v{r}\'ak, Ond\v{r}ej Du\v{s}ek
arXiv AI
Aug 17

The Metacognitive Bottleneck: Japanese Riddles Reveal Fundamental Limits of Machine Insight and Self-Evaluation in Reasoning AI

arXiv:2509. 14704v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Benchmark saturation and training-data contamination increasingly obscure whether reported gains in large language models (LLMs) reflect genuine advances in reasoning or familiarity with recurring patterns in benchmark problems.

By Masaharu Mizumoto, Dat Nguyen, Zhiheng Han, Xingfu Li, Yo Nakawake, Le Minh Nguyen
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 27

Rethinking the Multilingual Reasoning Gap with Layer Swap

The study investigates the performance gap between native-language reasoning and English-pivoted reasoning in large language models. By creating extensive multilingual reasoning datasets and fine‑tuning specialists on Qwen/Qwen3-8B-Base, the authors find that the native reasoning gap is much smaller (1.9–3.5%) than previously reported. They analyze weight‑space changes, discover a language‑agnostic reasoning core in the middle layers, and propose a Layer Swap technique that transfers these mid‑layer updates from an English specialist to native specialists, effectively closing most of the gap while maintaining native chain‑of‑thought output.

By Maxence Lasbordes, Am\'elie Chatelain, Djam\'e Seddah
arXiv Computation and Language
Oct 5

Investigating the Role of Reasoning-Language Alignment in Monolingual Retrieval-Augmented Generation

The study explores how the language used for reasoning affects retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) in a monolingual German setting. Using a German RAG question‑answering testbed based on the tabletop game The Dark Eye, the authors show that aligning the reasoning language with the query and retrieved documents improves performance, with German reasoning outperforming French reasoning. However, German reasoning still does not surpass the model’s native English reasoning, indicating that native multilingual reasoning is necessary for optimal results.

By Oliver Hauck, Mario Sanz-Guerrero, Katharina von der Wense
arXiv Computation and Language
Oct 22

Same Answer, Different Reasons: Trace-Level Divergence in Multilingual Large Language Models

The paper introduces a trace-level divergence framework for evaluating multilingual large language models, breaking down agreement into structural similarity, order consistency, and holistic similarity. Experiments across three reasoning benchmarks, seven languages, and six leading LLMs show that conventional holistic similarity metrics overstate agreement, with up to 67.3% of top-scoring examples lacking structural alignment. Human judgments align more closely with structural similarity, highlighting language-specific divergence and the need for trace-level evaluation in multilingual deployments.

By Rui Sun, Peizhao Mei, Xiewei Cheng, Kaizhuo Chen, Taoran Li, Zhiyuan Yu, Varun Chandrasekaran
arXiv AI
Aug 20

From Storage to Access: Verifiable Activation of Parametric Knowledge in LLMs via Explicit Priming and Implicit Reasoning

The paper introduces VAKE, a two‑stage reinforcement‑learning framework that activates latent factual knowledge in large language models. In the Priming stage, the model explicitly inserts bridging triples into an insufficient subgraph, guided by rewards from a frozen model’s answers. The Reasoning stage then trains the model to answer from the original input, demonstrating that the elicitation capability transfers to implicit reasoning and consistently outperforms baselines across multiple benchmarks and model sizes.

By Zuocheng Ying, Yang Yang, Yumou Wu, Chuanbo Zhu, Jiarui Wang, Ziqi Wu, Jingming Cai, Junqing Yu, Zikai Song