When Reasoning Goes Astray: Attention Dynamics of Uncontrolled Reasoning

Abstract:Large reasoning models (LRMs) improve performance on complex tasks through extended reasoning, yet the same process can degenerate into redundant verification and persistent generation loops. Such uncontrolled reasoning increases inference cost and creates risks of resource exhaustion and service degradation. However, existing mitigations largely truncate long outputs or react to surface repetition, and thus fail to distinguish normal thinking from uncontrolled reasoning or explain how benign reasoning degenerates into harmful behavior. In this paper, we operationalize LRM generation as four states and further introduce Reasoning-state Analysis via Dynamic Attention Responses (RADAR), which identifies the current reasoning state in real time and characterizes how effective reflection can develop into uncontrolled generation. Guided by RADAR's analysis, we further realign abnormal attention distributions toward patterns observed in normal requests and examine how this correction affects excessive reflection and persistent looping. Temporal analyses show that uncontrolled reasoning is characterized by attention distributions that deviate from normal generation, with abnormal trends becoming detectable before repetition begins. Correcting these deviations through Attention Realignment consistently reduces looping while largely preserving benign performance. Together, RADAR provide a mechanistic account of how reasoning becomes uncontrolled, offering actionable guidance for identifying critical failure stages and designing targeted runtime interventions.

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

arXiv:2609.38817 [cs.AI]

(or arXiv:2609.38817v1 [cs.AI] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.38817 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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