Improving Complex Reasoning with Dynamic Prompt Corruption: A soft prompt Optimization Approach

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Fan, Sinan, Xie, Liang, Shen, Chen, Teng, Ge, Yuan, Xiaosong, Zhang, Xiaofeng, Huang, Chenxi, Wang, Wenxiao, He, Xiaofei, Ye, Jieping
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Fan, Sinan
Xie, Liang
Shen, Chen
Teng, Ge
Yuan, Xiaosong
Zhang, Xiaofeng
Huang, Chenxi
Wang, Wenxiao
He, Xiaofei
Ye, Jieping
author_facet Fan, Sinan
Xie, Liang
Shen, Chen
Teng, Ge
Yuan, Xiaosong
Zhang, Xiaofeng
Huang, Chenxi
Wang, Wenxiao
He, Xiaofei
Ye, Jieping
contents Prompt-tuning (PT) for large language models (LLMs) can facilitate the performance on various conventional NLP tasks with significantly fewer trainable parameters. However, our investigation reveals that PT provides limited improvement and may even degrade the primitive performance of LLMs on complex reasoning tasks. Such a phenomenon suggests that soft prompts can positively impact certain instances while negatively affecting others, particularly during the later phases of reasoning. To address these challenges, We first identify an information accumulation within the soft prompts. Through detailed analysis, we demonstrate that this phenomenon is often accompanied by erroneous information flow patterns in the deeper layers of the model, which ultimately lead to incorrect reasoning outcomes. we propose a novel method called Dynamic Prompt Corruption (DPC) to take better advantage of soft prompts in complex reasoning tasks, which dynamically adjusts the influence of soft prompts based on their impact on the reasoning process. Specifically, DPC consists of two stages: Dynamic Trigger and Dynamic Corruption. First, Dynamic Trigger measures the impact of soft prompts, identifying whether beneficial or detrimental. Then, Dynamic Corruption mitigates the negative effects of soft prompts by selectively masking key tokens that interfere with the reasoning process. We validate the proposed approach through extensive experiments on various LLMs and reasoning tasks, including GSM8K, MATH, and AQuA. Experimental results demonstrate that DPC can consistently enhance the performance of PT, achieving 4%-8% accuracy gains compared to vanilla prompt tuning, highlighting the effectiveness of our approach and its potential to enhance complex reasoning in LLMs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_13208
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Improving Complex Reasoning with Dynamic Prompt Corruption: A soft prompt Optimization Approach
Fan, Sinan
Xie, Liang
Shen, Chen
Teng, Ge
Yuan, Xiaosong
Zhang, Xiaofeng
Huang, Chenxi
Wang, Wenxiao
He, Xiaofei
Ye, Jieping
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Prompt-tuning (PT) for large language models (LLMs) can facilitate the performance on various conventional NLP tasks with significantly fewer trainable parameters. However, our investigation reveals that PT provides limited improvement and may even degrade the primitive performance of LLMs on complex reasoning tasks. Such a phenomenon suggests that soft prompts can positively impact certain instances while negatively affecting others, particularly during the later phases of reasoning. To address these challenges, We first identify an information accumulation within the soft prompts. Through detailed analysis, we demonstrate that this phenomenon is often accompanied by erroneous information flow patterns in the deeper layers of the model, which ultimately lead to incorrect reasoning outcomes. we propose a novel method called Dynamic Prompt Corruption (DPC) to take better advantage of soft prompts in complex reasoning tasks, which dynamically adjusts the influence of soft prompts based on their impact on the reasoning process. Specifically, DPC consists of two stages: Dynamic Trigger and Dynamic Corruption. First, Dynamic Trigger measures the impact of soft prompts, identifying whether beneficial or detrimental. Then, Dynamic Corruption mitigates the negative effects of soft prompts by selectively masking key tokens that interfere with the reasoning process. We validate the proposed approach through extensive experiments on various LLMs and reasoning tasks, including GSM8K, MATH, and AQuA. Experimental results demonstrate that DPC can consistently enhance the performance of PT, achieving 4%-8% accuracy gains compared to vanilla prompt tuning, highlighting the effectiveness of our approach and its potential to enhance complex reasoning in LLMs.
title Improving Complex Reasoning with Dynamic Prompt Corruption: A soft prompt Optimization Approach
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.13208