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Reasoning LLMs show distinct internal trajectories beyond generation length

Researchers have developed a method to analyze the internal trajectories of reasoning-trained language models, distinguishing between simply taking more steps and following different computational paths. By adjusting for generation length, they found that model difficulty correlates with corrected trajectory geometry, particularly in coding tasks where harder problems show more direct paths in reasoning models compared to standard instruction-tuned models. This distinction was also observed, though less pronounced, in mathematics and Boolean satisfiability problems, suggesting reasoning training can indeed alter a model's internal processing distinct from mere length. AI

IMPACT Provides a new method to analyze LLM reasoning, potentially leading to better model interpretability and targeted training improvements.

RANK_REASON The cluster contains an academic paper detailing a new research methodology for analyzing LLM behavior.

Read on arXiv cs.CL →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 2 sources. How we write summaries →

Reasoning LLMs show distinct internal trajectories beyond generation length

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The cluster contains an academic paper detailing a new research methodology for analyzing LLM behavior.
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131 days old
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COVERAGE [2]

  1. arXiv cs.CL TIER_1 English(EN) · Sanmi Koyejo ·

    Reasoning Models Don't Just Think Longer, They Move Differently

    Reasoning-trained language models often spend more tokens on harder problems, but longer chains of thought do not show whether a model is merely computing for more steps or following a different internal trajectory. We study this distinction through hidden-state trajectories duri…

  2. arXiv stat.ML TIER_1 English(EN) · Anders Gj{\o}lbye, Lars Kai Hansen, Sanmi Koyejo ·

    Reasoning Models Don't Just Think Longer, They Move Differently

    arXiv:2605.15454v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Reasoning-trained language models often spend more tokens on harder problems, but longer chains of thought do not show whether a model is merely computing for more steps or following a different internal trajectory. We study this …