ProtoReasoning: Prototypes as the Foundation for Generalizable Reasoning in LLMs Article Swipe
He Feng
,
Zijun Chen
,
Xiaoyi Liang
,
Ma Tingting
,
Yicheng Qiu
,
Shuangzhi Wu
,
Junchi Yan
·
YOU?
·
· 2025
· Open Access
·
· DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2506.15211
YOU?
·
· 2025
· Open Access
·
· DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2506.15211
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.
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- Type
- preprint
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- en
- Landing Page
- http://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15211
- https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.15211
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- https://openalex.org/W4415333566
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https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2506.15211Digital Object Identifier
- Title
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ProtoReasoning: Prototypes as the Foundation for Generalizable Reasoning in LLMsWork title
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preprintOpenAlex work type
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enPrimary language
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2025Year of publication
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2025-06-18Full publication date if available
- Authors
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He Feng, Zijun Chen, Xiaoyi Liang, Ma Tingting, Yicheng Qiu, Shuangzhi Wu, Junchi YanList of authors in order
- Landing page
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https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15211Publisher landing page
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https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.15211Direct link to full text PDF
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YesWhether a free full text is available
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greenOpen access status per OpenAlex
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https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.15211Direct OA link when available
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0Total citation count in OpenAlex
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