← 研踪 PaperTrailACL Anthology · ACL 2026:acl:2026.acl-long.773 · 记录 #1
Do LLMs Really Need 10+ Thoughts for “Find the Time 1000 Days Later”? Towards Structural Understanding of LLM Overthinking
来源日期（仅到月份） 2026-07
来源记录日期 2026-07
雷达观测 2026-11-01 22:00
摘要
Models employing long chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning have shown superior performance on complex reasoning tasks. Yet, this capability introduces a critical and often overlooked inefficiency—overthinking—models often engage in unnecessarily extensive reasoning even for simple queries, incurring significant computations without accuracy improvements. While prior work has explored solutions to mitigate overthinking, a fundamental gap remains in our understanding of its underlying causes. Most existing analyses are limited to superficial, profiling-based observations, failing to delve into LLMs’ inner workings. This study introduces a systematic, fine-grained analyzer of LLMs’ thought process to bridge the gap, TRACE. We first benchmark the overthinking issue, confirming that long-thinking models are five to twenty times slower on simple tasks with no substantial gains. We then use TRACE to first decompose the thought process into minimally complete sub-thoughts. Next, by inferring discourse relationships among sub-thoughts, we construct granular thought progression graphs and subsequently identify common thinking patterns for topically similar queries. Our analysis reveals two major patterns for open-weight thinking models—Explorer and Late Landing. This finding provides evidence that over-verification and over-exploration are the primary drivers of overthinking in LLMs. Grounded in thought structures, we propose a utility-based definition of overthinking, which moves beyond length-based metrics. This revised definition offers a more insightful understanding of LLMs’ thought progression, as well as practical guidelines for principled overthinking management.
论文发现出处
这些页面提供论文线索，不代表同行评审或质量认证。
观测到的版本
平台记录号代表本站观测到的元数据变化，不是作者修订号。来源日期仅到月份或年份时，按该月或该年首日存档。
记录 #1 · 2026-07 · 最新观测版本
Do LLMs Really Need 10+ Thoughts for “Find the Time 1000 Days Later”? Towards Structural Understanding of LLM Overthinking
Models employing long chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning have shown superior performance on complex reasoning tasks. Yet, this capability introduces a critical and often overlooked inefficiency—overthinking—models often engage in unnecessarily extensive reasoning even for simple queries, incurring significant computations without accuracy improvements. While prior work has explored solutions to mitigate overthinking, a fundamental gap remains in our understanding of its underlying causes. Most existing analyses are limited to superficial, profiling-based observations, failing to delve into LLMs’ inner workings. This study introduces a systematic, fine-grained analyzer of LLMs’ thought process to bridge the gap, TRACE. We first benchmark the overthinking issue, confirming that long-thinking models are five to twenty times slower on simple tasks with no substantial gains. We then use TRACE to first decompose the thought process into minimally complete sub-thoughts. Next, by inferring discourse relationships among sub-thoughts, we construct granular thought progression graphs and subsequently identify common thinking patterns for topically similar queries. Our analysis reveals two major patterns for open-weight thinking models—Explorer and Late Landing. This finding provides evidence that over-verification and over-exploration are the primary drivers of overthinking in LLMs. Grounded in thought structures, we propose a utility-based definition of overthinking, which moves beyond length-based metrics. This revised definition offers a more insightful understanding of LLMs’ thought progression, as well as practical guidelines for principled overthinking management.
查看此版本解读 →查看此版本原文 ↗