arXiv:2510.19176cs.AIcs.CL2025-10中稿 · NeurIPS被引 4

提出零步思考机制,解决推理模型早期决策难题。

The Zero-Step Thinking: An Empirical Study of Mode Selection as Harder Early Exit in Reasoning Models

  • 在推理起始阶段不展开思考,仅凭预设信息做模式选择
  • 基于九个基线实验,发现提示方法易失效、内部信息更稳定
  • 适用于需要快速决策的低延迟推理场景

推理模型在数学和逻辑任务中表现优异,主要得益于逐步思考能力。但这也导致过度推理,带来不必要的计算开销。为缓解此问题,模式选择(Mode Selection)旨在自动决定使用长链式思维(Long-CoT)或短链式思维(Short-CoT),通过思考或无思考模式实现;而早期退出(Early Exit)则在推理过程中确定最优停止点。本文首次将模式选择视为一种更难的早期退出问题,因其需在推理开始前即做出决策,依赖预设的虚假思考信息,无需实际推理过程,称为零步思考。通过对九个基线模型的实证研究发现,基于提示的方法因分类能力有限而常失败;利用模型内部信息的方法虽整体表现更好,但仍存在稳定性问题。结果表明,仅依赖模型自身信息的方法在信息稀疏场景下仍不足以有效应对模式选择挑战,凸显该任务的持续困难性。代码已公开于https://github.com/Trae1ounG/Zero_Step_Thinking。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Reasoning models have demonstrated exceptional performance in tasks such as mathematics and logical reasoning, primarily due to their ability to engage in step-by-step thinking during the reasoning process. However, this often leads to overthinking, resulting in unnecessary computational overhead. To address this issue, Mode Selection aims to automatically decide between Long-CoT (Chain-of-Thought) or Short-CoT by utilizing either a Thinking or NoThinking mode. Simultaneously, Early Exit determines the optimal stopping point during the iterative reasoning process. Both methods seek to reduce the computational burden. In this paper, we first identify Mode Selection as a more challenging variant of the Early Exit problem, as they share similar objectives but differ in decision timing. While Early Exit focuses on determining the best stopping point for concise reasoning at inference time, Mode Selection must make this decision at the beginning of the reasoning process, relying on pre-defined fake thoughts without engaging in an explicit reasoning process, referred to as zero-step thinking. Through empirical studies on nine baselines, we observe that prompt-based approaches often fail due to their limited classification capabilities when provided with minimal hand-crafted information. In contrast, approaches that leverage internal information generally perform better across most scenarios but still exhibit issues with stability. Our findings indicate that existing methods relying solely on the information provided by models are insufficient for effectively addressing Mode Selection in scenarios with limited information, highlighting the ongoing challenges of this task. Our code is available at https://github.com/Trae1ounG/Zero_Step_Thinking.

推理模型模式选择零步思考

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