Overview

Large reasoning models study how language models can solve difficult problems by allocating computation across intermediate steps, tools, and alternative solution paths. Common approaches include reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards, supervised reasoning-trace distillation, tool use, search over sequential or parallel paths, and latent recurrent computation. Evaluation spans mathematics, coding, science question answering, logic, and multimodal tasks, measuring not only accuracy but also compute use, robustness, and the quality of intermediate reasoning. A central tension is that extra thinking can help on hard problems but also produce loops, errors, and safety risks, so researchers are developing adaptive stopping and compression while testing whether reasoning traces reliably reflect how answers are formed.

Latest papers

CardsList

339 papers25 papers in the last four weeks, up 4% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Watson & Holmes: A Naturalistic Benchmark for Comparing Human and LLM Reasoning

    Feb 23, 2026Thatchawin Leelawat, Lewis D GriffinInductive Reasoning in Language ModelsReasoning Evaluation

  2. SenTSR-Bench: Thinking with Injected Knowledge for Time-Series Reasoning

    Feb 23, 2026Zelin He, Boran Han, Xiyuan Zhang +10Time Series ReasoningLarge Reasoning Models

  3. RFEval: Benchmarking Reasoning Faithfulness under Counterfactual Reasoning Intervention in Large Reasoning Models

    Feb 19, 2026Yunseok Han, Yejoon Lee, Jaeyoung DoCoT FaithfulnessLarge Reasoning Models

  4. Training Large Reasoning Models Efficiently via Progressive Thought Encoding

    Feb 18, 2026Zeliang Zhang, Xiaodong Liu, Hao Cheng +3Efficient Language Model ReasoningLLM Reasoning

  5. BFS-PO: Best-First Search for Large Reasoning Models

    Feb 16, 2026Fiorenzo Parascandolo, Wenhui Tan, Enver Sangineto +2Efficient Language Model ReasoningRL for Language Model Reasoning

  6. Unlocking Reasoning Capability on Machine Translation in Large Language Models

    Feb 16, 2026Sara Rajaee, Sebastian Vincent, Alexandre Berard +3Structured Reasoning in Language ModelsLarge Reasoning Models

  7. Precedent-Informed Reasoning: Mitigating Overthinking in Large Reasoning Models via Test-Time Precedent Learning

    Feb 16, 2026Qianyue Wang, Jinwu Hu, Huanxiang Lin +5Efficient Language Model ReasoningOverthinking in Language Models

  8. Boule or Baguette? A Study on Task Topology, Length Generalization, and the Benefit of Reasoning Traces

    Feb 16, 2026William L. Tong, Ege Cakar, Cengiz PehlevanLength GeneralizationLarge Reasoning Models

  9. CoT is Not the Chain of Truth: An Empirical Internal Analysis of Reasoning LLMs for Fake News Generation

    Feb 4, 2026Zhao Tong, Chunlin Gong, Yiping Zhang +5Language Model Safety EvaluationLLM Interpretability

  10. Entropy-Preserving Supervised Fine-Tuning via Adaptive Self-Distillation for Large Reasoning Models

    Feb 2, 2026Hao Wang, Hao Gu, Hongming Piao +6Supervised Fine-TuningLanguage Model Distillation

  11. ConPress: Learning Efficient Reasoning from Multi-Question Contextual Pressure

    Feb 1, 2026Jie Deng, Shining Liang, Jun Li +2Efficient Language Model ReasoningLLM Inference Acceleration

  12. Metaphors are a Source of Cross-Domain Misalignment of Large Reasoning Models

    Jan 6, 2026Zhibo Hu, Chen Wang, Yanfeng Shu +2LLM AlignmentEmergent Misalignment in Language Models

  13. Distilling the Essence: Efficient Reasoning Distillation via Sequence Truncation

    Dec 24, 2025Wei-Rui Chen, Vignesh Kothapalli, Ata Fatahibaarzi +5CoT DistillationSelective Knowledge Distillation

  14. Step-Tagging: Toward controlling the generation of Language Reasoning Models through step monitoring

    Dec 16, 2025Yannis Belkhiter, Seshu Tirupathi, Giulio Zizzo +1Reasoning Trace AnalysisEfficient Language Model Reasoning

  15. Wait, Wait, Wait... Why Do Reasoning Models Loop?

    Dec 15, 2025Charilaos Pipis, Shivam Garg, Vasilis Kontonis +3Large Reasoning Models

  16. Superficial Reflection or Genuine Thought? A Fine-Grained Cognitive Analysis of Large Reasoning Models

    Nov 30, 2025Yuxiang Chen, Zuohan Wu, Ziwei Wang +6LLM Self-CorrectionCognitive Modeling

  17. ThreadWeaver: Adaptive Threading for Efficient Parallel Reasoning in Language Models

    Nov 24, 2025Long Lian, Sida Wang, Felix Juefei-Xu +7Parallel Reasoning in Language ModelsRL for Language Model Reasoning

  18. Reinforcement Learning Improves Traversal of Parametric Knowledge in LLMs

    Nov 8, 2025Renfei Zhang, Manasa Kaniselvan, Rylan Schaeffer abd Niloofar MireshghallahRL for Language Model ReasoningFactual Knowledge in Language Models

  19. OpenSIR: Open-Ended Self-Improving Reasoner

    Nov 1, 2025Wai-Chung Kwan, Joshua Ong Jun Leang, Pavlos Vougiouklis +3Self-Play RLRL for Language Model Reasoning

  20. Scaling Latent Reasoning via Looped Language Models

    Oct 29, 2025Rui-Jie Zhu, Zixuan Wang, Kai Hua +30Language Model PretrainingImplicit Reasoning in Language Models

  21. Learning to Reason Efficiently with Discounted Reinforcement Learning

    Oct 27, 2025Alex Ayoub, Kavosh Asadi, Dale Schuurmans +2Reinforcement LearningRL for Language Model Reasoning

  22. Think Right: Learning to Mitigate Under-Over Thinking via Adaptive, Attentive Compression

    Oct 2, 2025Joykirat Singh, Justin Chih-Yao Chen, Archiki Prasad +3RL for Language Model ReasoningLLM Inference Acceleration

  23. Learning How to Use Tools, Not Just When: Pattern-Aware Tool-Integrated Reasoning

    Sep 27, 2025Ningning Xu, Yuxuan Jiang, Shubhashis Roy Dipta +1Tool-Integrated ReasoningLLM Tool Use

  24. Reasoning or Rambling? Exploring the Effect of Thinking on Agent Persuasion

    Sep 25, 2025Haodong Zhao, Jidong Li, Zhaomin Wu +4LLM AgentsPersuasion in Language Models

  25. SEER: Self-Enhancing Chain-of-Thought Compression for Reasoning Models

    Sep 17, 2025Kerui Huang, Shuhan Liu, Xing Hu +3Efficient Language Model ReasoningCoT Compression

  26. Fast, Slow, and Tool-augmented Thinking for LLMs: A Review

    Aug 17, 2025Xinda Jia, Jinpeng Li, Zezhong Wang +6Adaptive Reasoning in Language ModelsLLM Tool Use