mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Causal reasoning in LLMs

167 papers0 this weekMedium confidence in this grouping: mostly one topic, with blurry edgesMedium confidence in this grouping: mostly one topic, with blurry edges · About

Keywords: causal, causal reasoning, counterfactual, reasoning, language

Key facts. Causal reasoning in LLMs: 167 papers on arXiv since 2022 (data through 7 Oct 2026). 40 of its 167 mapped papers (24%) cite “CLadder: Assessing Causal Reasoning in Language Models” (2023, arXiv 2312.04350). 37 of its 167 mapped papers (22%) cite “Causal Reasoning and Large Language Models: Opening a New Frontier for Causality” (2023, arXiv 2305.00050). 4 new papers 17 Sep–7 Oct.

What’s new

17 Sep – 7 Oct 2026

  1. Earlier · 4
  2. Reasoning Models Are Accurate but Unsound on Identification
  3. Thinking Leakage: A Causal Audit of NoThink Post-Training in Hybrid Reasoning Models also fits: Prompting and chain-of-thought reasoning
  4. Are Stated Reasoning Steps Causally Load-Bearing? also fits: Prompting and chain-of-thought reasoning
  5. xWhyL: Causal Interactive Learning

Foundations

Most cited by papers here

  1. CLadder: Assessing Causal Reasoning in Language Models2023cited by 40 here
  2. Causal Reasoning and Large Language Models: Opening a New Frontier for Causality2023cited by 37 here
  3. e-CARE: a New Dataset for Exploring Explainable Causal Reasoning2022cited by 13 here
  4. Unveiling Causal Reasoning in Large Language Models: Reality or Mirage?2025cited by 13 here
  5. Is ChatGPT a Good Causal Reasoner? A Comprehensive Evaluation2023cited by 10 here

Lineage

The papers this direction builds on, oldest first.

Each paper on the line cites the one before.

  1. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 51 here
  2. 2022Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 16 here
  3. 2022Solving Quantitative Reasoning Problems with Language Modelscited by 6 here
  4. 2023LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Modelscited by 11 here
  5. 2023Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Modelscited by 13 here
  6. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 11 here
  7. 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 14 here
17 more it builds on, not in this chain
  1. 2022e-CARE: a New Dataset for Exploring Explainable Causal Reasoningcited by 13 here
  2. 2022Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasonerscited by 21 here
  3. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8 here
  4. 2022Challenging BIG-Bench Tasks and Whether Chain-of-Thought Can Solve Themcited by 6 here
  5. 2022Program of Thoughts Prompting: Disentangling Computation from Reasoning for Numerical Reasoning Taskscited by 7 here
  6. 2023Causal Reasoning and Large Language Models: Opening a New Frontier for Causalitycited by 37 here
  7. 2023COLA: Contextualized Commonsense Causal Reasoning from the Causal Inference Perspectivecited by 6 here
  8. 2023Is ChatGPT a Good Causal Reasoner? A Comprehensive Evaluationcited by 10 here
  9. 2023Reasoning or Reciting? Exploring the Capabilities and Limitations of Language Models Through Counterfactual Taskscited by 7 here
  10. 2023CLadder: Assessing Causal Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 40 here
  11. 2024Are LLMs Capable of Data-based Statistical and Causal Reasoning? Benchmarking Advanced Quantitative Reasoning with Datacited by 10 here
  12. 2024Causal Evaluation of Language Modelscited by 9 here
  13. 2024CLEAR: Can Language Models Really Understand Causal Graphs?cited by 7 here
  14. 2024GSM-Symbolic: Understanding the Limitations of Mathematical Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 8 here
  15. 2025CounterBench: Evaluating and Improving Counterfactual Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 7 here
  16. 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 10 here
  17. 2025Unveiling Causal Reasoning in Large Language Models: Reality or Mirage?cited by 13 here

The 24 most cited of 375.

Browse

30 of 167, ranked 6–35

  1. 6Are LLMs Capable of Data-based Statistical and Causal Reasoning? Benchmarking Advanced Quantitative Reasoning with Data202410
  2. 7Causal Evaluation of Language Models20249
  3. 8CounterBench: Evaluating and Improving Counterfactual Reasoning in Large Language Models20257
  4. 9CLEAR: Can Language Models Really Understand Causal Graphs?20247
  5. 10CausalEval: Towards Better Causal Reasoning in Language Models20246
  6. 11COLA: Contextualized Commonsense Causal Reasoning from the Causal Inference Perspective20236
  7. 12Executable Counterfactuals: Improving LLMs' Causal Reasoning Through Code20255
  8. 13Investigating Chain-of-thought with ChatGPT for Stance Detection on Social Media20235
  9. 14Counterfactual reasoning: Testing language models' understanding of hypothetical scenarios20235
  10. 15ROCK: Causal Inference Principles for Reasoning about Commonsense Causality20225
All 30
  1. 16EconCausal: A Context-Aware Economic Reasoning Benchmark for Large Language Models20254
  2. 17ALCM: Autonomous LLM-Augmented Causal Discovery Framework20244
  3. 18A Critical Review of Causal Reasoning Benchmarks for Large Language Models20244
  4. 19Causal Inference with Large Language Model: A Survey20244
  5. 20Reasoning Elicitation in Language Models via Counterfactual Feedback20244
  6. 21C2P: Featuring Large Language Models with Causal Reasoning20243
  7. 22Causal Reasoning of Entities and Events in Procedural Texts20233
  8. 23CLOMO: Counterfactual Logical Modification with Large Language Models20233
  9. 24Enhancing Causal Reasoning in Large Language Models: A Causal Attribution Model for Precision Fine-Tuning20233
  10. 25Towards Fine-grained Causal Reasoning and QA20223
  11. 26Uncovering Hidden Correctness in LLM Causal Reasoning via Symbolic Verification20262
  12. 27CausalFlip: A Benchmark for LLM Causal Judgment Beyond Semantic Matching20262
  13. 28Caliper: Probing Lexical Anchors versus Causal Structure in LLMs20262
  14. 29Do Large Language Models Reason Causally Like Us? Even Better?20252
  15. 30ExpliCa: Evaluating Explicit Causal Reasoning in Large Language Models20252
  16. 31A Survey on Enhancing Causal Reasoning Ability of Large Language Models20252
  17. 32CARE: Turning LLMs Into Causal Reasoning Expert20252
  18. 33Can Large Language Models Learn Independent Causal Mechanisms?20242
  19. 34Robust agents learn causal world models20242
  20. 35Teaching Transformers Causal Reasoning through Axiomatic Training20242