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ProtoReasoning: Prototypes as the Foundation for Generalizable Reasoning in LLMs (arxiv.org)
2 points by simonpure on Jun 20, 2025 | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: Different fields often hide the same reasoning shape, so this system turns problems into formal logic or planning puzzles a computer can check. Training on these stripped-down versions beat plain-language training, lifting logical reasoning by 4.7% and handling same-shaped new problems better.

Abstract

Recent advances in Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) trained with Long Chain-of-Thought (Long CoT) reasoning have demonstrated remarkable cross-domain generalization capabilities. However, the underlying mechanisms supporting such transfer remain poorly understood. We hypothesize that cross-domain generalization arises from shared abstract reasoning prototypes -- fundamental reasoning patterns that capture the essence of problems across domains. These prototypes minimize the nuances of the representation, revealing that seemingly diverse tasks are grounded in shared reasoning structures.Based on this hypothesis, we propose ProtoReasoning, a framework that enhances the reasoning ability of LLMs by leveraging scalable and verifiable prototypical representations (Prolog for logical reasoning, PDDL for planning).ProtoReasoning features: (1) an automated prototype construction pipeline that transforms problems into corresponding prototype representations; (2) a comprehensive verification system providing reliable feedback through Prolog/PDDL interpreters; (3) the scalability to synthesize problems arbitrarily within prototype space while ensuring correctness. Extensive experiments show that ProtoReasoning achieves 4.7% improvement over baseline models on logical reasoning (Enigmata-Eval), 6.3% improvement on planning tasks, 4.0% improvement on general reasoning (MMLU) and 1.0% on mathematics (AIME24). Significantly, our ablation studies confirm that learning in prototype space also demonstrates enhanced generalization to structurally similar problems compared to training solely on natural language representations, validating our hypothesis that reasoning prototypes serve as the foundation for generalizable reasoning in large language models.

Feng He, Zijun Chen, Xinnian Liang, Tingting Ma, Yunqi Qiu, Shuangzhi Wu, Junchi Yan
arXiv:2506.15211 · cs.CL · submitted Jun 18, 2025
abstract · pdf

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