arXiv Machine Learning

How Does Reasoning Flow? Tracing Attention-Induced Information Flow for Targeted RL in LLMs

arXiv:2606. 10646v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Token-level credit assignment remains a key obstacle for reinforcement learning (RL) in large language models (LLMs), where RL recipes typically treat all tokens equally, failing to distinguish decisive reasoning steps from routine formatting or fluent filler.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 9

Attention Illuminates LLM Reasoning: The Preplan-and-Anchor Rhythm Enables Fine-Grained Policy Optimization

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.

By Yang Li, Zhichen Dong, Yuhan Sun, Weixun Wang, Shaopan Xiong, Yijia Luo, Jiashun Liu, Han Lu, Jiamang Wang, Wenbo Su, Bo Zheng, Junchi Yan
arXiv AI
Jul 31

Probing the Origins of Reasoning Performance: Representational Quality for Mathematical Problem-Solving in RL vs. SFT Fine-Tuned Models

arXiv:2607. 26119v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large reasoning models trained via reinforcement learning (RL) have been increasingly shown to outperform their supervised fine-tuned (SFT) counterparts on mathematical reasoning tasks; Yet the mechanistic basis for this advantage remains unclear.

By Antyabha Rahman, Akshaj Gurugubelli, Omar Ankit, Kevin Zhu, Aishwarya Balwani
arXiv AI
Aug 11

How Much Backtracking is Enough? Exploring the Interplay of SFT and RL in Enhancing LLM Reasoning

arXiv:2505. 24273v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) suggest that reinforcement learning (RL) effectively internalizes search strategies, yielding significant improvements on challenging reasoning tasks through extended chains of thought.

By Hongyi James Cai, Junlin Wang, Xiaoyin Chen, Bhuwan Dhingra