构建推理模型的分析框架,可自动识别并引导其思考路径。
The CoT Encyclopedia: Analyzing, Predicting, and Controlling how a Reasoning Model will Think
- 从模型生成的思维链中自动提取多样推理特征
- 通过聚类与对比规则提升分析可解释性,预测推理策略
- 发现训练格式比数据领域更影响模型推理行为
长思维链(CoT)是现代大语言模型高效应用的关键,但对其推理策略的理解仍有限。现有方法依赖人工预设策略类型,难以覆盖模型行为的多样性。本文提出 CoT Encyclopedia,一种自底向上的分析与引导框架:自动提取模型生成的思维链中的多样化推理标准,将其嵌入语义空间,聚类为代表性类别,并构建对比性评价标准以解释推理行为。人类评估显示,该框架比现有方法更具可解释性和全面性。此外,我们证明该理解可带来性能提升:能预测模型倾向的策略,并引导其采用更有效路径。最后,我们发现训练数据格式(如自由作答与选择题)对推理行为的影响远超数据领域,强调了格式感知模型设计的重要性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Long chain-of-thought (CoT) is an essential ingredient in effective usage of modern large language models, but our understanding of the reasoning strategies underlying these capabilities remains limited. While some prior works have attempted to categorize CoTs using predefined strategy types, such approaches are constrained by human intuition and fail to capture the full diversity of model behaviors. In this work, we introduce the CoT Encyclopedia, a bottom-up framework for analyzing and steering model reasoning. Our method automatically extracts diverse reasoning criteria from model-generated CoTs, embeds them into a semantic space, clusters them into representative categories, and derives contrastive rubrics to interpret reasoning behavior. Human evaluations show that this framework produces more interpretable and comprehensive analyses than existing methods. Moreover, we demonstrate that this understanding enables performance gains: we can predict which strategy a model is likely to use and guide it toward more effective alternatives. Finally, we provide practical insights, such as that training data format (e.g., free-form vs. multiple-choice) has a far greater impact on reasoning behavior than data domain, underscoring the importance of format-aware model design.
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