Structured Reasoning in Language Models

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36 papers8 papers in the last four weeks, against 2 the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

Structure Tax: How Structured Output affects LLMs Performance
Oct 8, 2026Vineet Kumar, Kanishka, Bhuvanesh MandoraStructured Output Generation Structured Reasoning in Language Models
PayPal Artificial Intelligence PayPal, Bengaluru India
The Dichotomy Between Pattern Recognition and Step-by-Step Reasoning
Oct 6, 2026Amrut Nadgir, Pratik Chaudhari, Vijay BalasubramanianLLM Reasoning Structured Reasoning in Language Models
University of Pennsylvania
Hierarchical Continuous Diffusion Language Models
Oct 1, 2026Hui Ren, Zihan Li, Chang Liu +2Structured Reasoning in Language Models Diffusion Language Model Decoding
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · Amazon.com, Inc.
ReHoPER: Receding-Horizon Planning for Enhanced Reasoning
Oct 1, 2026Saeed Ahmadnia, Cornelia CarageaCompositional Reasoning Sequential Decision Making
Department of Computer Science University of Illinois Chicago
Does Learning Protein Folding Generalize to Broader Reasoning?
Sep 30, 2026Yong Liu, Zhanpeng Shi, Yizhou Dang +4Protein Structure Prediction Structured Reasoning
Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Fudan University · Shanghai Innovation Institute +1
Not Too Hard, Not Too Easy: Learning from Intermediate States for LLM Structured Reasoning
Sep 27, 2026Hongbo Chen, Guohua Lu, Ting Dang +1Structured Reasoning in Language Models Self-Training for Language Models
University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand · University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
Capable yet Parsimonious: Extracting and Characterizing Hidden Chain-of-Thought in Frontier Models
Sep 22, 2026Xiaoyu Luo, Tao Ren, Wenrui Yu +3LLM Interpretability CoT Reasoning
Department of Computer Science Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark · Department of Electronic Systems Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark · Seafill
FirmCORe: A Benchmark for Structured Reasoning about Inter-Firm Collaboration Opportunities
Sep 15, 2026Tian Du, Tiantong Wu, Yafei Wang +3Structured Reasoning in Language Models LLM Evaluation
Southwest University of Finance and Economics · Nanyang Technological University · Beijing University of Post and Telecommunication
Detecting Hidden Chain-of-Thought in Large Language Models with Linguistic, Behavioral, and Mechanistic Indicators
Aug 30, 2026Armaan Singh, Ryan Trinh Le, Jasmine Kaur +5Implicit Reasoning in Language Models Language Model Probing
1Stanford University · 2York University · 3Facebook
Thinking in a Low-Resource Language: What SFT Builds, What RL Fixes, What Accuracy Cannot See
Aug 18, 2026Ayoub Kirouane, Christos PetrocheilosFine-Tuning Language Models Structured Reasoning in Language Models
Sophea AI, KIEFER SA, Athens, Greece
Penelope: Localized Latent Recurrence for Efficient Structured Reasoning
Jul 28, 2026Yutong Chen, Shouqian Shi, Xinran Liu +5Structured Reasoning in Language Models Decoder-Only Language Models
Uncovering Latent Reasoning Strategies in Language Models
Jul 20, 2026Awni Altabaa, John LaffertyPosterior Collapse Implicit Reasoning in Language Models
Yale University
Answer-Conditioned Chains of Thought Degrade Verifiable-Reasoning Distillation in Large Language Models
Jul 16, 2026Jungseob Lee, Seungyoon Lee, Suhyune Son +4CoT Distillation Language Model Distillation
1Korea University · 2Zoom Communications · 3Yonsei University
Structured Thoughts For Improved Reasoning And Context Pruning
Jul 11, 2026Zain Sarwar, Supriyo Chakraborty, Berkcan Kapusuzoglu +5Efficient Language Model Reasoning Structured CoT Reasoning
University of Chicago · Capital One
Cost of Reasoning in non-English Languages: A Case Study on Japanese
Jul 11, 2026Yuu JinnaiCross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models Multilingual Language Model Evaluation
CyberAgent / Tokyo, Japan
Local Causal Attribution of Chain-of-Thought Reasoning
Jun 20, 2026Dennis Wei, Yannis Belkhiter, Erik Miehling +1LLM Interpretability Causal Attribution
1IBM Research.
Tyler: Typed Latent Reasoning for Language Models -- When to Think, What to Compute, and How Much to Allocate
Jun 15, 2026Hanyu Lin, Min Cai, Jiawei Wen +1Latent Reasoning LLM Reasoning
1Shenzhen University · University of Alberta
ReasonOps: Operator Segmentation for LLM Reasoning Traces
May 28, 2026Daniel Lee, Owen Queen, James ZouLLM Reasoning Reasoning Trace Analysis
Stanford University
Learning to Reason Efficiently with A* Post-Training
May 23, 2026Andreas Opedal, Francesco Ignazio Re, Abulhair Saparov +3Process Reward Models RL for Language Model Reasoning
αETH Zürich · γPurdue University · βMPI for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen
HyperGuide: Hyperbolic Guidance for Efficient Multi-Step Reasoning in Large Language Models
May 22, 2026Yuyu Liu, Haotian Xu, Yanan He +3LLM Fine-Tuning Efficient Language Model Reasoning
Department of Computer Science Stony Brook University · Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics Stony Brook University · Department of Computer Science Yale University +2
Rethinking Dense Sequential Chains: Reasoning Language Models Can Extract Answers from Sparse, Order-Shuffling Chain-of-Thoughts
May 8, 2026Yi-Chang Chen, Feng-Ting Liao, Da-shan Shiu +1CoT Reasoning Causal Interventions in Language Models
MediaTek Research · Artificial Intelligence Center of Research Excellence, National Taiwan University
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
Heuristic Classification of Thoughts Prompting (HCoT): Integrating Expert System Heuristics for Structured Reasoning into Large Language Models
Apr 14, 2026Lei Lin, Jizhao Zhu, Yong Liu +3Structured Reasoning in Language Models Constraint-Guided Reasoning in Language Models
Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · Shenyang Aerospace University · ZGC LAB, Beijing,China +1
Procedural Knowledge at Scale Improves Reasoning
Apr 1, 2026Di Wu, Devendra Singh Sachan, Wen-tau Yih +1Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning LLM Reasoning
University of California, Los Angeles · Meta FAIR
CogRAG: Tackling Heterogeneous Cognitive Demands in RAG via Stratified Retrieval and Reasoning
Apr 1, 2026Xudong Wang, Zilong Wang, Kui Su +1Structured Reasoning in Language Models Adaptive RAG
School of Computer and Computing Science, Hangzhou City University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310015, China · Institute of Digital Twin, Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo, Zhejiang 315200, China · Innovation Center of Yangtze River Delta, Zhejiang University, Jiaxing, Zhejiang 314100, China
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)
FVRuleLearner: Operator-Level Reasoning Tree (Op-Tree)-Based Rules Learning for Formal Verification
Mar 6, 2026Lily Jiaxin Wan, Chia-Tung Ho, Yunsheng Bai +4Structured Reasoning in Language Models SystemVerilog Assertion Generation
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · NVIDIA · University of Maryland, College Park
X-RAY: Mapping LLM Reasoning Capability via Formalized and Calibrated Probes
Mar 5, 2026Tianxi Gao, Yufan Cai, Yusi Yuan +1Structured Reasoning in Language Models Reasoning Evaluation
National University of Singapore, Singapore
Learning Structured Reasoning via Tractable Trajectory Control
Mar 2, 2026Po-Nien Kung, Zhen Yang, Jeffrey Luo +7Structured Reasoning in Language Models RL for Language Model Reasoning
University of California, Los Angeles · Apple
Test-Time Scaling with Diffusion Language Models via Reward-Guided Stitching
Feb 26, 2026Roy Miles, Aysim Toker, Andreea-Maria Oncescu +2Structured Reasoning in Language Models Test-Time Scaling
Huawei London Research Center · MVP Lab

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Structure Tax: How Structured Output affects LLMs Performance

Vineet Kumar, Kanishka, Bhuvanesh Mandora

PayPal Artificial Intelligence PayPal, Bengaluru India

Structured Output Generation Structured Reasoning in Language Models LLM Reliability

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Deploying large language models in production often requires constraining outputs to structured formats such as JSON or XML, and prior work treats the resulting accuracy loss as an inherent

structure tax'. We re-examine this claim by evaluating a battery of models, datasets and schemas, measuring task accuracy, confidence calibration, and hidden-state geometry. The tax turns out to depend on schema design rather than on structure per se: reasoning-first field ordering matches or exceeds free-form accuracy, while answer-first ordering causes steep drops, particularly in smaller models. Format sensitivity scales inversely with a task's own structural constraints, and schemas that preserve reasoning order also improve calibration with CKA showing greater separability between correct and incorrect representations in middle transformer layers. Our findings indicate that properly designed structured formats can match or exceed free-form performance, reframing the critical question from

whether to structure' to `how to structure' for optimal reasoning preservation.