Language Models can perform Single-Utterance Self-Correction of Perturbed Reasoning

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Hauptverfasser: Silver, Sam, Sun, Jimin, Zhang, Ivan, Hooker, Sara, Kim, Eddie
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Silver, Sam
Sun, Jimin
Zhang, Ivan
Hooker, Sara
Kim, Eddie
author_facet Silver, Sam
Sun, Jimin
Zhang, Ivan
Hooker, Sara
Kim, Eddie
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive mathematical reasoning capabilities, yet their performance remains brittle to minor variations in problem description and prompting strategy. Furthermore, reasoning is vulnerable to sampling-induced errors which autoregressive models must primarily address using self-correction via additionally-generated tokens. To better understand self-correction capabilities of recent models, we conduct experiments measuring models' ability to self-correct synthetic perturbations introduced into their Chain of Thought (CoT) reasoning. We observe robust single-utterance intrinsic self-correction behavior across a range of open-weight models and datasets, ranging from subtle, implicit corrections to explicit acknowledgments and corrections of errors. Our findings suggest that LLMs, including those not finetuned for long CoT, may possess stronger intrinsic self-correction capabilities than commonly shown in the literature. The presence of this ability suggests that recent "reasoning" model work involves amplification of traits already meaningfully present in models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_15894
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Language Models can perform Single-Utterance Self-Correction of Perturbed Reasoning
Silver, Sam
Sun, Jimin
Zhang, Ivan
Hooker, Sara
Kim, Eddie
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive mathematical reasoning capabilities, yet their performance remains brittle to minor variations in problem description and prompting strategy. Furthermore, reasoning is vulnerable to sampling-induced errors which autoregressive models must primarily address using self-correction via additionally-generated tokens. To better understand self-correction capabilities of recent models, we conduct experiments measuring models' ability to self-correct synthetic perturbations introduced into their Chain of Thought (CoT) reasoning. We observe robust single-utterance intrinsic self-correction behavior across a range of open-weight models and datasets, ranging from subtle, implicit corrections to explicit acknowledgments and corrections of errors. Our findings suggest that LLMs, including those not finetuned for long CoT, may possess stronger intrinsic self-correction capabilities than commonly shown in the literature. The presence of this ability suggests that recent "reasoning" model work involves amplification of traits already meaningfully present in models.
title Language Models can perform Single-Utterance Self-Correction of Perturbed Reasoning
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15894