arXiv:2507.20758v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting significantly enhances model reasoning, yet its internal mechanisms remain poorly understood. We analyze CoT’s operational principles by reversely tracing information flow across decoding, projection, and activation phases. Our quantitative analysis suggests that CoT may serve as a decoding space pruner, leveraging answer templates to guide output generation, with higher template adherence strongly correlating with improved performance. Furthermore, we surprisingly find that CoT modulates neuron engagement in a task-dependent manner: reducing neuron activation in open-domain tasks, yet increasing it in closed-domain scenarios. These findings offer a novel mechanistic interpretability framework and critical insights for enabling targeted CoT interventions to design more efficient and robust prompts. We released our code and data at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/cot-D247.
Digital health tools and point solutions—pitfalls in population health program measurement
Digital health tools are generally poorly regulated and often lack strong research evidence, posing challenges for purchasers of point solutions such as employer groups and