Attention Sensitivity Is Not Enough: Dissociating Attention-Level and Behavioural In-Context Learning under Fine-Tuning

Abstract:In-context learning (ICL) lets large language models adapt to new tasks from demonstrations, and fine-tuning can erode this behaviour. Many preservation diagnostics inspect attention: if attention changes when demonstrations change, the model is treated as context-sensitive. This paper asks how far that proxy can be trusted once it is optimised. We formalise \emph{In-Context Sensitivity} (ICS), the average row distance between last-token attention on matched and mismatched demonstration prefixes, and pair it with \emph{ICL-GAP}, the behavioural accuracy gap between the same prefixes. In a controlled four-arm ablation on Llama-2-7B, an ICS-maximising regulariser ($\armKL$) drives ICS to $1.413$, within $0.5\%$ of its geometric ceiling. The behavioural readout tells a different story: ICL-GAP stays near zero and MMLU accuracy moves from $0.371$ to $0.279$, a Goodhart dissociation of the bounded attention proxy. Endpoint statistics locate the mechanism: attention grows sharp and near-disjoint across prefixes yet routes to formatting and demonstration-body tokens rather than labels. A random-label protocol confirms that the behavioural probe family retains dynamic range at the same checkpoints. In a constructive sweep, behaviour gating partially mitigates the effect, while objectives anchored to pretrained computation hold the high-MMLU, moderate-ICS region that divergence maximisers leave. The main lesson is diagnostic: attention-level ICL proxies earn their place as training targets only after validation against behavioural gaps.

Machine Learning (cs.LG); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Computation and Language (cs.CL)

arXiv:2609.00064 [cs.LG]

(or arXiv:2609.00064v1 [cs.LG] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.00064 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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