cs.AIJun 20, 2026

Can Reasoning Models Detect Changes to their Chains of Thought?

Authors: Sathvik NapaUtkarsh SinghChengyuan XueMiriam WannerWilliam Walden

Organizations: Johns Hopkins University

Abstract

There are many reasons one may want to edit a model's chain of thought (CoT) -- e.g., to prefill it with reasoning from a stronger model or to remove steps that may yield unsafe outputs. The success of these interventions plausibly depends on a model's inability to notice them, as the model may alter its behavior if it suspects tampering. In this work, we study whether recent reasoning models are able to detect such interventions on their CoTs under a variety of conditions: both during reasoning and after it, and when prefilled both with their own CoTs and with those of other models. Broadly, we find that (i) models exhibit only very modest detection accuracy; (ii) models struggle to identify how their CoT was modified; and (iii) models are about as good at detecting changes to their own CoTs as to those of other models.

Explore similar work

CardsList
  1. Evading Chain-of-Thought Monitoring Through Model Poisoning

    Aug 3, 2026Giorgio Severi, Shujaat Mirza, Blake Bullwinkel +1Reasoning TracesBackdoor Attacks