Think-to-Talk or Talk-to-Think? When LLMs Come Up with an Answer in Multi-Step Reasoning

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2412.01113v1
• Date: Mon, 02 Dec 2024 04:35:54 GMT
• Title: Think-to-Talk or Talk-to-Think? When LLMs Come Up with an Answer in Multi-Step Reasoning
• Authors: Keito Kudo, Yoichi Aoki, Tatsuki Kuribayashi, Shusaku Sone, Masaya Taniguchi, Ana Brassard, Keisuke Sakaguchi, Kentaro Inui,
• Abstract summary: We investigate the internal reasoning mechanism of language models during symbolic multi-step reasoning.<n>We find that simple subproblems are solved before chain-of-thought begins, and more complicated multi-hop calculations are performed during CoT.
• Score: 26.79907640964047
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: This study investigates the internal reasoning mechanism of language models during symbolic multi-step reasoning, motivated by the question of whether chain-of-thought (CoT) outputs are faithful to the model's internals. Specifically, we inspect when they internally determine their answers, particularly before or after CoT begins, to determine whether models follow a post-hoc "think-to-talk" mode or a step-by-step "talk-to-think" mode of explanation. Through causal probing experiments in controlled arithmetic reasoning tasks, we found systematic internal reasoning patterns across models; for example, simple subproblems are solved before CoT begins, and more complicated multi-hop calculations are performed during CoT.

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