Faithfulness of Language Model Reasoning

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24 papers6 papers in the last four weeks, against 1 the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

Computation, Not Memory: Chain-of-Thought and State Tracking in LLM Agents
Oct 19, 2026Pedram Mouseli, Massieh MoayediCoT Reasoning Multi-Turn Language Model Reasoning
University of Toronto
CoTs remain monitorable when being unfaithful requires computation: Replicating and Extending the Necessity Effect Across Eleven Models
Oct 17, 2026Arav Dhoot, Yixiong Hao, Zephaniah RoeFaithfulness of Language Model Reasoning Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations
Columbia University · Second Look Research
Verbalising Model's Computation for Chain-of-Thought Faithfulness Detection
Oct 16, 2026Yujing Wang, Yulan He, Wenya Wang +1CoT Faithfulness Faithfulness of Language Model Reasoning
King’s College London · Nanyang Technological University
What LLMs Do in the Shadows: Reading Context Reliance from the Unembedding Dark Space
Oct 16, 2026Alexandra Kuleshova, Andrey Volodichev, Daria Kotova +1LLM Hallucination Detection Faithfulness of Language Model Reasoning
Applied AI Institute
The Reliance Hypothesis: Chain-of-Thought Faithfulness Rises as Language Resource Level Falls
Oct 16, 2026Lucas Resck, Jingyi Sun, Qianli Wang +2CoT Faithfulness Faithfulness of Language Model Reasoning
Language Technology Lab, University of Cambridge · University of Copenhagen · Technische Universität Berlin +1
Correct Verdicts, Flawed Reasoning: Structured Auditing of LLM-based Vulnerability Reasoning
Oct 5, 2026Boyue Caroline Hu, Kaivalya Ahir, Ronghao Ni +1LLM Auditing Software Vulnerability Detection
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsilvanya, USA
Efficient Reasoning Training Does Not Always Harm CoT Faithfulness and Monitorability
Oct 2, 2026Samuel Lewis-Lim, Xingwei Tan, Mario Sanger +2Faithfulness of Language Model Reasoning Efficient Language Model Reasoning
School of Computer Science, University of Sheffield · AstraZeneca
From Concept Alignment to Causal Grounding: An Intervention Test of Chain-of-Thought Faithfulness
Sep 19, 2026Qianli Wang, Yilong Wang, Dennis Wei +5CoT Faithfulness LLM Interpretability
Technische Universität Berlin · German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) · IBM Research +4
Reason-Mediated Behavioral Models for Auditing LLM Social Simulators
Jul 27, 2026Atharva Pandey, Gautam JajooLLM Auditing Human Behavior Simulation
Kairosity
Not All LLM Reasoning is Visible in the Chain-of-Thought
Jul 24, 2026Vatsal Baherwani, Tom Goldstein, Ashwinee PandaCoT Faithfulness LLM Interpretability
New York University · University of Maryland · TogetherAI
Know Your Limits : On the Faithfulness of LLMs as Solvers and Autoformalizers in Legal Reasoning
Jun 15, 2026Olivia Peiyu Wang, Sanna Wong-Toropainen, Daneshvar Amrollahi +4Faithfulness of Language Model Reasoning LLM Reliability
UC Santa Cruz · Univ. Helsinki · CodeX, Stanford +4
ConsisGuard: Aligning Safety Deliberation with Policy Enforcement in LLM Guardrails
May 29, 2026Yan Wang, Zhixuan Chu, Zihao Xue +9LLM Guardrails Faithfulness of Language Model Reasoning
Alibaba Group · Zhejiang University · Huzhou Normal University +1
Do Models Know Why They Changed Their Mind? Interpretability and Faithfulness of Chain-of-Thought Under Knowledge Conflict
May 26, 2026Pruthvinath Jeripity VenkataLLM Uncertainty Estimation Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations
Independent Researcher
GeoFaith: A Spatio-Temporal Dual View of Faithful Chain-of-Thought
May 26, 2026Weijiang Lv, Wentong Zhao, Jiayu Wang +3CoT Faithfulness RL for Language Model Reasoning
1Xidian University · 2Xi’an Jiaotong University · 3Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence +2
Retrieval-Augmented Linguistic Calibration
May 19, 2026Yi-Fan Yeh, Linwei Tao, Minjing Dong +4Confidence Estimation in Language Models Faithfulness of Language Model Reasoning
School of Computer Science University of Sydney Sydney, Australia · City University of Hong Kong Hong Kong · Shanghai Jiao Tong University Shanghai, China +1
Lost in Interpretation: The Plausibility-Faithfulness Trade-off in Cross-Lingual Explanations
May 19, 2026Somnath Banerjee, Pranav Jha, Rima Hazra +1Language Model Auditing Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur · TCG Crest · National University of Singapore
Drop the Act: Probe-Filtered RL for Faithful Chain-of-Thought Reasoning
May 12, 2026Swapnil Parekh, Naman GoyalRL for Language Model Reasoning Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations
Intuit
The Reasoning Trap: An Information-Theoretic Bound on Closed-System Multi-Step LLM Reasoning
May 3, 2026Kwan Soo ShinReasoning Evaluation Evidence-Grounded Reasoning
PolymathMinds AI Lab
RSAT: Structured Attribution Makes Small Language Models Faithful Table Reasoners
Apr 30, 2026Jugal Gajjar, Kamalasankari SubramaniakuppusamyLLM Reasoning LLM Grounding
Department of Computer Science, The George Washington University, USA
Verify Before You Commit: Towards Faithful Reasoning in LLM Agents via Self-Auditing
Apr 9, 2026Wenhao Yuan, Chenchen Lin, Jian Chen +3Faithfulness of Language Model Reasoning LLM Agent Reliability
The University of Hong Kong · Sun Yat-sen University
Measuring and curing reasoning rigidity: from decorative chain-of-thought to genuine faithfulness
Mar 24, 2026Abhinaba Basu, Pavan ChakrabortyLanguage Model Reasoning Evaluation Structured Reasoning in Language Models
Indian Institute of Information Technology Allahabad (IIITA) · National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT)
Lie to Me: How Faithful Is Chain-of-Thought Reasoning in Reasoning Models?
Mar 23, 2026Richard J. YoungCoT Faithfulness Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Department of Management, Entrepreneurship and Technology, Lee Business School, Las Vegas, NV, USA · DeepNeuro AI, Las Vegas, NV, USA
Reasoning Theater: Disentangling Model Beliefs from Chain-of-Thought
Mar 5, 2026Siddharth Boppana, Annabel Ma, Max Loeffler +5Faithfulness of Language Model Reasoning Language Model Reasoning Evaluation
Goodfire AI · Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
The Ends Justify the Thoughts: RL-Induced Motivated Reasoning Fools CoT Monitors
Oct 20, 2025Nikolaus Howe, Micah CarrollLLM Safety Monitoring CoT Monitoring
Mila, Université de Montréal · UC Berkeley

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Computation, Not Memory: Chain-of-Thought and State Tracking in LLM Agents

Pedram Mouseli, Massieh Moayedi

University of Toronto

CoT Reasoning Multi-Turn Language Model Reasoning Faithfulness of Language Model Reasoning

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Language-model agents often reason before they act, and the value of monitoring that reasoning depends on how it relates to their actions. We ask how an agent's actions depend on its reasoning when the correct action depends on a changing state. In a small file-system task, background events announce which file's lock has been toggled but not its new value. The agent therefore has to reconstruct the current locks from its history before it can move files safely. With Qwen3-8B and Qwen3.5-9B, we separate two roles of reasoning: generating it before each action, and retaining earlier reasoning in the prompt. Most of the reduction in lock-violating commands comes from reasoning written at the moment of action. Retaining earlier reasoning adds little to rule-following, although it helps one model complete the task. The benefit depends on what the reasoning says. Filler text, reasoning written for another history and an accurate table of the state do not reproduce it. When we give the agent reasoning written for a history that differs in one lock value, the agent acts on that reasoning even against its own history. Without reasoning, linear probes recover the state from the model's activations about as well as a text classifier recovers it from the transcript. However, decoding accuracy does not predict which interventions change the agent's actions. In this setting, the benefit of reasoning for rule-following comes mainly from generating it at each step. The state that can be decoded without reasoning is a limited guide to how the agent acts.