mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Thread of Thought Unraveling Chaotic Contexts

arXiv 2311.08734 ↗First posted 15 Nov 2023cs.CLcited by 71

On the map: LLM reasoning → Prompting and chain-of-thought reasoning

Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Models (LLMs) have ushered in a transformative era in the field of natural language processing, excelling in tasks related to text comprehension and generation. Nevertheless, they encounter difficulties when confronted with chaotic contexts (e.g., distractors rather than long irrelevant context), leading to the inadvertent omission of certain details within the chaotic context. In response to these challenges, we introduce the "Thread of Thought" (ThoT) strategy, which draws inspiration from human cognitive processes. ThoT systematically segments and analyzes extended contexts while adeptly selecting pertinent information. This strategy serves as a versatile "plug-and-play" module, seamlessly integrating with various LLMs and prompting techniques. In the experiments, we utilize the PopQA and EntityQ datasets, as well as a Multi-Turn Conversation Response dataset (MTCR) we collected, to illustrate that ThoT significantly improves reasoning performance compared to other prompting techniques.

Key facts. Cited by 71 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Prompting and chain-of-thought reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 16 of its 30 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Nov 2023.

Builds on

16 of 30 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023Graph of Thoughts: Solving Elaborate Problems with Large Language Models18 Aug
  2. 2023Beyond Chain-of-Thought, Effective Graph-of-Thought Reasoning in Language Models26 May

Other references · 14

  1. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,132
  2. 2023LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Modelscited by 13,958
  3. 2023Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Modelscited by 12,865
  4. 2023Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contextscited by 3,383
  5. 2023Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Modelscited by 3,155
  6. 2023Efficient Streaming Language Models with Attention Sinkscited by 2,115
  7. 2023Extending Context Window of Large Language Models via Positional Interpolationcited by 721
  8. 2023LongLLMLingua: Accelerating and Enhancing LLMs in Long Context Scenarios via Prompt Compressioncited by 443
  9. 2023The Reversal Curse: LLMs trained on "A is B" fail to learn "B is A"cited by 399
  10. 2023Sentiment Analysis in the Era of Large Language Models: A Reality Checkcited by 262
  11. 2023LongNet: Scaling Transformers to 1,000,000,000 Tokenscited by 201
  12. 2023DISC-LawLLM: Fine-tuning Large Language Models for Intelligent Legal Servicescited by 117
2 more
  1. 2023ChatCAD: Interactive Computer-Aided Diagnosis on Medical Image using Large Language Modelscited by 116
  2. 2023Retrieval meets Long Context Large Language Modelscited by 114

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 28; 2025: 30; 2026: 13.

71 papers.

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  1. 2024A Systematic Survey of Prompt Engineering in Large Language Models: Techniques and Applicationscited by 428
  2. 2024MAGIS: LLM-Based Multi-Agent Framework for GitHub Issue Resolutioncited by 132
  3. 2024Visual In-Context Learning for Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 124
  4. 2024A Survey of Prompt Engineering Methods in Large Language Models for Different NLP Taskscited by 46
  5. 2024Disentangling Memory and Reasoning Ability in Large Language Modelscited by 43
  6. 2024Rethinking Visual Dependency in Long-Context Reasoning for Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 41
  7. 2024Meta Reasoning for Large Language Modelscited by 29
  8. 2024Adaptive Ensembles of Fine-Tuned Transformers for LLM-Generated Text Detectioncited by 22
  9. 2024Beyond pip install: Evaluating LLM Agents for the Automated Installation of Python Projectscited by 21
  10. 2024Chain-of-Interaction: Enhancing Large Language Models for Psychiatric Behavior Understanding by Dyadic Contextscited by 19
  11. 2024Rumor Detection with a novel graph neural network approachcited by 14
  12. 2024The New Agronomists: Language Models are Experts in Crop Managementcited by 12
38 more
  1. 2024Image Captioning in news report scenariocited by 11
  2. 2024InsectMamba: Insect Pest Classification with State Space Modelcited by 11
  3. 2025Effects of Prompt Length on Domain-specific Tasks for Large Language Modelscited by 10
  4. 2025Understanding LLM Scientific Reasoning through Promptings and Model's Explanation on the Answerscited by 10
  5. 2024Grasping the Essentials: Tailoring Large Language Models for Zero-Shot Relation Extractioncited by 9
  6. 2024Exploiting Diffusion Prior for Out-of-Distribution Detectioncited by 7
  7. 2025TheraMind: A Strategic and Adaptive Agent for Longitudinal Psychological Counselingcited by 7
  8. 2024Dr.Academy: A Benchmark for Evaluating Questioning Capability in Education for Large Language Modelscited by 6
  9. 2024Applications of Generative AI in Healthcare: algorithmic, ethical, legal and societal considerationscited by 4
  10. 2025Bridging Language Models and Financial Analysiscited by 4
  11. 2025X-Ray-CoT: Interpretable Chest X-ray Diagnosis with Vision-Language Models via Chain-of-Thought Reasoningcited by 4
  12. 2025Schema for In-Context Learningcited by 4
  13. 2025Typhoon T1: An Open Thai Reasoning Modelcited by 3
  14. 2025Has My System Prompt Been Used? Large Language Model Prompt Membership Inferencecited by 3
  15. 2025ThinkPilot: Steering Reasoning Models via Automated Think-prefixes Optimizationcited by 3
  16. 2026Demystifying Low-Rank Knowledge Distillation in Large Language Models: Convergence, Generalization, and Information-Theoretic Guaranteescited by 3
  17. 2024Large Vision-Language Models for Remote Sensing Visual Question Answeringcited by 2
  18. 2025Contrastive Speaker-Aware Learning for Multi-party Dialogue Generation with LLMscited by 2
  19. 2025High-Fidelity Pseudo-label Generation by Large Language Models for Training Robust Radiology Report Classifierscited by 2
  20. 2025Coherent Multimodal Reasoning with Iterative Self-Evaluation for Vision-Language Modelscited by 2
  21. 2025AMELIA: A Family of Multi-task End-to-end Language Models for Argumentationcited by 2
  22. 2026Enhancing Self-Correction in Large Language Models through Multi-Perspective Reflectioncited by 2
  23. 2026Accelerating Training of Autoregressive Video Generation Models via Local Optimization with Representation Continuitycited by 2
  24. 2026World Models Meet Language Models: On the Complementarity of Concrete and Abstract Reasoningcited by 2
  25. 2024End-To-End Training and Testing Gamification Framework to Learn Human Highway Drivingcited by 1
  26. 2024Enhancing Agricultural Machinery Management through Advanced LLM Integrationcited by 1
  27. 2024Temporal Contrastive Learning for Video Temporal Reasoning in Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 1
  28. 2025A comprehensive study of LLM-based argument classification: from LLAMA through GPT-4o to Deepseek-R1cited by 1
  29. 2025DocRefine: An Intelligent Framework for Scientific Document Understanding and Content Optimization based on Multimodal Large Model Agentscited by 1
  30. 2025DeCoT: Decomposing Complex Instructions for Enhanced Text-to-Image Generation with Large Language Modelscited by 1
  31. 2025MPCAR: Multi-Perspective Contextual Augmentation for Enhanced Visual Reasoning in Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 1
  32. 2025M3PO: Multimodal-Model-Guided Preference Optimization for Visual Instruction Followingcited by 1
  33. 2025Robust Diagram Reasoning: A Framework for Enhancing LVLM Performance on Visually Perturbed Scientific Diagramscited by 1
  34. 2025Hierarchical Contextual Grounding LVLM: Enhancing Fine-Grained Visual-Language Understanding with Robust Groundingcited by 1
  35. 2025Enhancing Retrieval Augmentation via Adversarial Collaborationcited by 1
  36. 2025More Bias, Less Bias: BiasPrompting for Enhanced Multiple-Choice Question Answeringcited by 1
  37. 2026Rethinking Reinforcement Fine-Tuning in LVLM: Convergence, Reward Decomposition, and Generalizationcited by 1
  38. 2024Leveraging Large Language Models for Comparative Literature Summarization with Reflective Incremental Mechanismscited by 0

50 most cited of 71 All 71 (JSON)

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  2. 2023Why Can Large Language Models Generate Correct Chain-of-Thoughts?
  3. 2024Larger Language Models Don't Care How You Think: Why Chain-of-Thought Prompting Fails in Subjective Tasks
  4. 2024Attention Heads of Large Language Models: A Survey
  5. 2025Don't Take Things Out of Context: Attention Intervention for Enhancing Chain-of-Thought Reasoning in Large Language Models
  6. 2025Read Quietly, Think Aloud: Decoupling Comprehension and Reasoning in LLMs
  7. 2025On the Thinking-Language Modeling Gap in Large Language Models
  8. 2025Thinking Before You Speak: A Proactive Test-time Scaling Approach