arXiv:2609.03633cs.CLcs.AI2026-09

发现推理模型提前终止时会继续生成推理内容,影响结果准确性。

</think> Doesn't Stop Reasoning: Analysis of Spurious CoT Termination

论文配图:</think> Doesn't Stop Reasoning: Analysis of Spurious CoT Termination
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 通过增强对结束标记的关注,减少错误的推理延续。
  • 实验显示增加关注可降低回答阶段长度和虚假推理行为。
  • 适合研究大模型推理机制与优化早期退出策略的学者。

链式思维(CoT)推理虽提升大型推理模型在复杂任务上的表现,但常产生冗长重复的推理过程。近期无训练的提前退出方法通过插入结束思考标记(EoT, </think>)来缩短推理路径。本文研究发现,该标记并不能总引发干净的回答阶段:回答阶段生成可能在模型重新生成另一个EoT前持续进行,且此段内容长度随提前退出节省的推理令牌数增加而增长,表现出持续推理行为。我们称此为虚假的CoT终止。假设其源于对注入EoT的关注不足,提出退出标记注意力偏置(EAB)验证。在四个大型推理模型、五个基准数据集和两种提前退出方法上,提高对EoT的关注能有效减少虚假终止及回答阶段长度。结果揭示了仅靠外部匹配显式思考块格式无法可靠控制模型推理流程。代码已开源。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning improves large reasoning models (LRMs) on complex tasks but often produces long, redundant traces. Recent training-free early-exit methods shorten these traces by choosing an intermediate point to stop reasoning. We study one such strategy that injects an end-of-think token (EoT, </think>) at this point to trigger the reasoning-to-answering transition, and find that the injected EoT does not always induce a clean answering phase. Answering-phase generation can continue before the model regenerates another EoT, with the span preceding this regenerated EoT scaling with the reasoning tokens saved by early exit and exhibiting continued reasoning behavior. We call this spurious CoT termination, where reasoning-like generation continues into the answering phase. We hypothesize that insufficient attention to the injected EoT contributes to spurious CoT termination and probe this hypothesis with Exit-token Attention Biasing (EAB). Across four LRMs, five benchmarks, and two early-exit methods, increasing attention to the injected EoT reduces spurious CoT termination and answering-phase length. These results reveal a limitation of controlling LRMs by externally matching their explicit think-block format. Inserting the EoT token conforms to this format but does not by itself guarantee the intended reasoning-to-answering transition. Our code is available at https://github.com/Seunghee-Koh/Spurious-CoT-Termination.

大模型推理链式思维早期退出注意力机制

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