Structured Reasoning in Language Models

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65 papers19 papers in the last four weeks, up 217% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

A Tight Hierarchy for Chain of Thought
Nov 6, 2026Thanh Le, A. Pavan, N. V. VinodchandranCoT Reasoning Structured Reasoning in Language Models
School of Computing, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
AlgoPilot: Cross-Paradigm Reasoning in Language Models via Strategy Selection and Guidance
Nov 2, 2026Yilun Hao, Ruixiao Yang, Hudson Hilal +5Adaptive Reasoning in Language Models Structured Reasoning in Language Models
Massachusetts Institute of Technology · Harvard University · MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab
Library of Layers (LoL): Adaptively Ordering Transformer Layers at Runtime
Nov 2, 2026Abdellah Rahmani, Sean McLeish, Ang Li +3Transformer Adaptive Reasoning in Language Models
EPFL · University of Maryland · New York University +1
Think with Skills: Pseudocode Planning Before Execution for Advanced Reasoners
Nov 2, 2026Boshen Zhou, Boxuan Yue, Xiang Li +1LLM Agent Planning Structured Reasoning in Language Models
Honor Device Co., Ltd., China
VCoT-SQL: Enhancing Text-to-SQL Generation through Dual Chain-of-Thought Validation Training
Oct 31, 2026Rui Zhang, Yujia Su, Ruixuan Li +2Text-to-SQL Execution-Guided Text-to-SQL
School of Computer Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
Enhancing Language Model Reasoning with Structured Multi-Level Modeling
Oct 31, 2026Siheng Xiong, Ali Payani, Faramarz FekriStructured Reasoning in Language Models Long-Horizon LLM Reasoning
Georgia Institute of Technology · Cisco Research
RECAST: REconstruction of Chain-of-Thought via Auditable Structured Traces
Oct 30, 2026Qi Wang, Kang Xu, Chengcheng Wan +1Structured Reasoning in Language Models
East China Normal University · Shanghai Innovation Institute · Software Engineering Institute, ECNU
Specification-Guided Generation for Large Language Models
Oct 30, 2026Alessandro Previti, Konstantinos Vandikas, Mario Alviano +5Language Model Decoding Constrained Decoding
Ericsson AB, Stockholm, Sweden · DEMACS, University of Calabria, Rende, Italy · RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden
Scaling Mathematical Proof Supervision from Structured Textbooks
Oct 29, 2026Youqing Fang, Zhouqi Hua, Yinhao Tang +7LLM Mathematical Reasoning Structured Reasoning in Language Models
University of Science and Technology of China · Shanghai AI Laboratory · Fudan University +1
Fu-TCM: a multimodal large language model that learns traditional Chinese medicine diagnostic reasoning
Oct 28, 2026Jiahang Xie, Tong Jin, Lingfei Wu +9Medical LLMs Traditional Chinese Medicine
School of Data Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, China · School of Life Sciences, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China · The Affiliated People’s Hospital of Fujian University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Fuzhou, Fujian, China +3
Search-Guided Reasoning Trace Curation for Verilog Generation
Oct 26, 2026Matthew DeLorenzo, Kevin Tieu, Prithwish Jana +4Code Generation Structured Reasoning in Language Models
Texas A&M University · Georgia Institute of Technology
CEMIR vs. FISER: a comparative study of reasoning-based and enrichment-based approaches to pragmatic intent recognition
Oct 23, 2026Ziya Hosseynzadeh, Farjad Fallah, Farnoosh Fallah +3Multimodal Intent Recognition Pragmatic Reasoning in Language Models
Speech and Language Processing Laboratory (SLPL), Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran · School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Tehran, Iran · Department of Computer Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
Causal Chain of Thought: Mitigating Attention Leakage via Context Isolation
Oct 22, 2026Gabriele Dominici, Teague McMillan, Fazl Barez +2Structured Reasoning in Language Models Faithfulness of Language Model Reasoning
Università della Svizzera Italiana · ETH Zurich · University of Oxford
OmniSimulator: Aligning Small Language Models for Authentic Heterogeneous Behavior Modeling
Oct 21, 2026Jiawei Chen, Ruoxi Xu, Boxi Cao +12User Simulation Human Behavior Simulation
Chinese Information Processing Laboratory, Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences · Kuaishou Technology
Hierarchical Masked Diffusion Language Models
Oct 21, 2026Parul Gupta, Satwik, Avni Aggarwal +5Masked Diffusion Models Diffusion Language Model Decoding
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi · IBM Research
From Abstraction to Action: DSLs for Natural Language Abstraction Interpretation and Execution
Oct 20, 2026Amit Lisha, Reut TsarfatyInstruction Following Structured Reasoning in Language Models
Bar-Ilan University, Israel
Breaking Diffusion: Parallel Reasoning with Draft Refinement
Oct 19, 2026Jaesang Yu, Seoyeon Byun, Yun Wang +2Diffusion Language Models Parallel Reasoning in Language Models
KAIST · Microsoft Research Asia · SkillBench
ABACUS: Program-Guided Multistep Reasoning over Frozen Judgment Models
Oct 19, 2026Yuhao Wang, Zelin ZangStructured Reasoning in Language Models Efficient Language Model Reasoning
Westlake University · Hong Kong Institute of Science & Innovation, CAS · Tsientang Institute for Advanced Study
Spherical Fixed-Point Reasoners: Adaptive Loop Halting on the Hypersphere
Oct 19, 2026Arber Zela, Artavazd Maranjyan, Pol Puigdemont +3Adaptive Reasoning in Language Models Structured Reasoning in Language Models
EPFL · Lamarr Institute · Fraunhofer IAIS +1
When Form Changes but Logic Doesn't: Building Logic-invariant LLMs through Logical Structure
Oct 18, 2026Xuyuan Liu, Xinshuai Dong, Elynn Chen +1LLM Reasoning Structured Reasoning in Language Models
Dartmouth College · Carnegie Mellon University · New York University
Means-Ends Analysis Helps LLMs Plan in Continuous-State Domains
Oct 18, 2026Jiayi Li, Carl KingsfordLLM Planning Structured Reasoning in Language Models
Ray and Stephanie Lane Computational Biology Department Kenneth C. Griffin School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
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, Vijay Balasubramanian, Pratik ChaudhariLLM 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

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A Tight Hierarchy for Chain of Thought

Thanh Le, A. Pavan, N. V. Vinodchandran

School of Computing, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

CoT Reasoning Structured Reasoning in Language Models Transformer

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Chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning has emerged as a powerful paradigm for extending the computational capabilities of transformer-based models. A growing body of recent work has begun to uncover the fine-grained computational power of transformers augmented with CoT, as well as their connections to classical complexity theory. In this work, we advance this line of research by establishing the first hierarchy theorem for CoT-based computation. Our main result shows that for any reasonable resource bound

r(n) \geq n

and any

\varepsilon > 0

\mathrm{CoT}(r(n)) \subsetneq \mathrm{CoT}(r(n)^{1+\varepsilon}),

where

\mathrm{CoT}(r(n))

denotes the class of decision problems solvable by transformers using

O(r(n))

CoT reasoning steps on inputs of length

n

. Our result shows that increasing the number of CoT reasoning steps provably yields strictly greater computational power, establishing CoT steps as a fundamental resource in transformer-based computation. Unlike classical hierarchy theorems, which are typically proved via diagonalization, our approach leverages known coarse-grained simulations between CoT-augmented transformers and Turing machines in both directions. Building on these connections, we adapt the classical padding technique from complexity theory to this setting to obtain a tight hierarchy. A key technical contribution of our work is the implementation of padding within the transformer-based CoT model.