Reasoning Beyond Chain-of-Thought: A Latent Computational Mode in Large Language Models

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2601.08058v1
• Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2026 23:01:21 GMT
• Title: Reasoning Beyond Chain-of-Thought: A Latent Computational Mode in Large Language Models
• Authors: Zhenghao He, Guangzhi Xiong, Bohan Liu, Sanchit Sinha, Aidong Zhang,
• Abstract summary: Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting has improved the reasoning performance of large language models (LLMs)<n>It remains unclear why it works and whether it is the unique mechanism for triggering reasoning in large language models.
• Score: 39.5490415037017
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting has improved the reasoning performance of large language models (LLMs), but it remains unclear why it works and whether it is the unique mechanism for triggering reasoning in large language models. In this work, we study this question by directly analyzing and intervening on the internal representations of LLMs with Sparse Autoencoders (SAEs), identifying a small set of latent features that are causally associated with LLM reasoning behavior. Across multiple model families and reasoning benchmarks, we find that steering a single reasoning-related latent feature can substantially improve accuracy without explicit CoT prompting. For large models, latent steering achieves performance comparable to standard CoT prompting while producing more efficient outputs. We further observe that this reasoning-oriented internal state is triggered early in generation and can override prompt-level instructions that discourage explicit reasoning. Overall, our results suggest that multi-step reasoning in LLMs is supported by latent internal activations that can be externally activated, while CoT prompting is one effective, but not unique, way of activating this mechanism rather than its necessary cause.

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