arXiv Machine Learning

Do Reasoning Representations Help Humans Evaluate LLM Outputs?

The paper investigates whether reasoning representations—explanations for large language model outputs—aid humans in evaluating those outputs. A controlled human study tested six reasoning formats across tasks of varying complexity, measuring structural understanding, error detection, and trust calibration. Results revealed a mismatch: participants favored planning- and decomposition-based representations, yet simpler chain-of-thought traces better supported verification, trust, and interpretability, while preferred formats increased calibration risks.

arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 27

ReFIne: A Framework for Trustworthy Large Reasoning Models with Reliability, Faithfulness, and Interpretability

ReFIne is a training framework that augments large reasoning models with three trustworthiness properties: interpretability, faithfulness, and reliability. It combines supervised fine‑tuning with GRPO to produce structured, tag‑based reasoning traces, explicitly disclose decisive information, and provide self‑assessments of soundness and confidence. Applied to Qwen3 models, ReFIne improves interpretability by 44.0 %, faithfulness by 18.8 %, and reliability by 42.4 % on mathematical benchmarks.

By Chung-En Sun, Ge Yan, Akshay Kulkarni, Tsui-Wei Weng
arXiv AI
Aug 28

Improving LLM Interpretability with User-Centric Chain-of-Thought Reasoning

The paper proposes a user‑centric Chain‑of‑Thought (CoT) reasoning framework that structures LLM reasoning traces into self‑contained, verifiable steps using XML‑like tags. This design allows users to independently assess and correct the AI’s reasoning while preserving performance on mathematical reasoning tasks. User studies show that the approach improves perceived usefulness and ease of use compared to standard CoT.

By Philipp Schr\"oppel
arXiv AI
Sep 3

Thinking effort aligns between humans and reasoning models in abductive reasoning

The study examines how the effort expended by large reasoning models (LRMs) compares to that of humans during abductive reasoning tasks. By analyzing reaction times and reasoning traces, the authors find that LRMs and humans exhibit similar patterns of effort and error types. They also demonstrate that decoding strategies allowing models to explore multiple reasoning paths further align the models’ reasoning costs with human effort.

By Henry Arthur
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 11

Are Latent Reasoning Models Easily Interpretable?

arXiv:2604. 04902v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Latent reasoning models (LRMs) have attracted significant research interest due to their low inference cost (relative to explicit reasoning models) and theoretical ability to explore multiple reasoning paths in parallel.

By Connor Dilgren, Sarah Wiegreffe
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
Sep 3

SocialMaze: A Benchmark for Evaluating and Enhancing Social Reasoning in Large Language Models in Complex Social Environments

SocialMaze is a new benchmark designed to evaluate large language models on social reasoning tasks that involve deep reasoning, dynamic interaction, and information uncertainty. It comprises six tasks drawn from social deduction games, everyday interactions, and digital communities, and includes automated checks and human validation to ensure data quality. Experiments with twelve LLMs reveal that stronger chain‑of‑thought reasoning improves performance on deeper inference tasks, while uncertainty consistently hurts results; targeted fine‑tuning on curated reasoning traces can markedly enhance structured social‑reasoning abilities.

By Zixiang Xu, Yanbo Wang, Yue Huang, Haomin Zhuang, Yujun Zhou, Jiayi Ye, Sixian Li, Zirui Song, Lang Gao, Chenxi Wang, Zhaorun Chen, Wang Pan, Yue Zhao, Jieyu Zhao, Xiangliang Zhang, Xiuying Chen