When large language models (LLMs) fail to generalize or make haphazard errors in reasoning, it is often taken as evidence that LLMs are not truly reasoning, but rather performing a kind of pattern matching. The implication is that people's behavior does not exhibit the same types of failures because human reasoning uses principled and abstract world models.
arXiv:2606. 13607v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: When large language models (LLMs) fail to generalize or make haphazard errors in reasoning, it is often taken as evidence that LLMs are not truly reasoning, but rather performing a kind of pattern matching.
The paper investigates whether current reasoning models exhibit systematicity—the idea that understanding one concept should extend to closely related variations—by extending rule induction tasks from cognitive science. Using task isomorphisms like recombination and substitution, the authors generate structurally equivalent task variants and test models on them. Results show that while models can solve the original tasks, they frequently fail on these equivalent variants, indicating a lack of systematicity in their reasoning abilities.
arXiv:2512.00729v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Motivated by the observed human-like behaviours in Large Reasoning Models (LRMs), this paper introduces a comprehensive taxonomy to characterise at...
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:2608. 14161v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: LLMs exhibit social biases that can produce inaccurate and discriminatory inferences, posing risks in high-stakes applications.
arXiv:2506. 21571v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large Reasoning Models (LRMs), which autonomously produce a reasoning Chain of Thought (CoT) before producing final responses, offer a promising approach to interpreting and monitoring model behaviors.
arXiv:2606. 06635v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Failures in language model reasoning emerge through distinct processes that leave identifiable signatures in the reasoning trace.
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.
arXiv:2608.28623v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large multimodal reasoning models (LMRMs) are increasingly capable, largely through generating explicit chain-of-thought reasoning before ans...
arXiv:2603. 01437v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: As chain of thought (CoT) has become central to scaling reasoning capabilities in large language models (LLMs), it has also emerged as a promising tool for interpretability, suggesting the opportunity to understand model decisions through verbalized reasoning.
arXiv:2608.30413v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Defeasible reasoning is a type of reasoning where inferences are drawn from plausible current evidence, but can be retracted upon the introduction of n...
Defeasible reasoning is a type of reasoning where inferences are drawn from plausible current evidence, but can be retracted upon the introduction of newer evidence. Although recent studies have exami...