arXiv Machine Learning By Ibne Farabi Shihab, Sanjida Akhter, Md Najmus Swaqeeb, Abu Sa-Adat Mohamed Moon-Im Al Ahsan, Anuj Sharma

Spectral Tail Interventions in Decoder-Only Language Models: Reasoning-Sensitive Weight Structure from Controlled Surgery

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The paper investigates how the upper spectral tails of weight matrices in decoder‑only transformer language models influence reasoning behavior. By performing controlled interventions on the query–key product and comparing them to factor‑level surgeries, the authors find that edits targeting the spectral tail more strongly affect model performance across multiple checkpoints and reasoning benchmarks. The study also explores how inverse participation ratios predict accuracy transitions and shows that tail‑aware low‑rank adaptations converge faster than standard methods.

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