# Internal Consistency and Self-Feedback in Large Language Models: A Survey

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.14507 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.14507/

## Key facts

- Cited by 50 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Test-time compute and efficient thinking, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 142 of its 161 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Jul 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Test-time compute and efficient thinking](https://mlsanity.com/lr/test-time-compute-and-efficient-thinking/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 142)

- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14168/) (2021)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18290/) (2023)
- [Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.03300/) (2020)
- [Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08361/) (2020)
- [Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11171/) (2022)
- [Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03874/) (2021)
- [Think you have Solved Question Answering? Try ARC, the AI2 Reasoning Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.05457/) (2018)
- [Dropout as a Bayesian Approximation: Representing Model Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02142/) (2015)
- [Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11366/) (2023)
- [Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contexts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03172/) (2023)
- [Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17651/) (2023)
- [Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10601/) (2023)
- [Constitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08073/) (2022)
- [TruthfulQA: Measuring How Models Mimic Human Falsehoods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07958/) (2021)
- [TriviaQA: A Large Scale Distantly Supervised Challenge Dataset for Reading Comprehension](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.03551/) (2017)
- [Self-Instruct: Aligning Language Models with Self-Generated Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10560/) (2022)
- [A Survey of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.18223/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11432/) (2023)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10997/) (2023)
- [Language Models (Mostly) Know What They Know](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05221/) (2022)
- [Challenging BIG-Bench Tasks and Whether Chain-of-Thought Can Solve Them](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09261/) (2022)
- [Improving Factuality and Reasoning in Language Models through Multiagent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14325/) (2023)
- [Inference-Time Intervention: Eliciting Truthful Answers from a Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03341/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Evaluation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03109/) (2023)
- [Large Language Models Cannot Self-Correct Reasoning Yet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01798/) (2023)
- [Teaching Large Language Models to Self-Debug](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05128/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 50)

- [Towards Reasoning Era: A Survey of Long Chain-of-Thought for Reasoning Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09567/) (2025)
- [LLMs Know More Than They Show: On the Intrinsic Representation of LLM Hallucinations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02707/) (2024)
- [Scalable Best-of-N Selection for Large Language Models via Self-Certainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.18581/) (2025)
- [Attention Heads of Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.03752/) (2024)
- [Latent Space Chain-of-Embedding Enables Output-free LLM Self-Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13640/) (2024)
- [xVerify: Efficient Answer Verifier for Reasoning Model Evaluations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.10481/) (2025)
- [Self-Consistency Preference Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04109/) (2024)
- [Unveiling Visual Perception in Language Models: An Attention Head Analysis Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.18108/) (2024)
- [Entropy-based Exploration Conduction for Multi-step Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15848/) (2025)
- [Surveying the MLLM Landscape: A Meta-Review of Current Surveys](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18991/) (2024)
- [MoC: Mixtures of Text Chunking Learners for Retrieval-Augmented Generation System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09600/) (2025)
- [Large language models for artificial general intelligence (AGI): A survey of foundational principles and approaches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.03151/) (2025)
- [Meta-Chunking: Learning Text Segmentation and Semantic Completion via Logical Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.12788/) (2024)
- [Alignment and Safety in Large Language Models: Safety Mechanisms, Training Paradigms, and Emerging Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19672/) (2025)
- [SAND: Boosting LLM Agents with Self-Taught Action Deliberation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.07441/) (2025)
- [Benchmarking the Capabilities of Large Language Models in Transportation System Engineering: Accuracy, Consistency, and Reasoning Behaviors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08302/) (2024)
- [Co-Sight: Enhancing LLM-Based Agents via Conflict-Aware Meta-Verification and Trustworthy Reasoning with Structured Facts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.21557/) (2025)
- [ToMAP: Training Opponent-Aware LLM Persuaders with Theory of Mind](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22961/) (2025)
- [Learning from Diverse Reasoning Paths with Routing and Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.16861/) (2025)
- [Seeking Consistent Flat Minima for Better Domain Generalization via Refining Loss Landscapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13573/) (2024)
- [Adaptive Termination for Multi-round Parallel Reasoning: An Universal Semantic Entropy-Guided Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06829/) (2025)
- [Dynamic Attention-Guided Context Decoding for Mitigating Context Faithfulness Hallucinations in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01059/) (2025)
- [BioAgents: Democratizing Bioinformatics Analysis with Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.06314/) (2025)
- [TurtleBench: Evaluating Top Language Models via Real-World Yes/No Puzzles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05262/) (2024)
- [Blind Spot Navigation in Large Language Model Reasoning with Thought Space Explorer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24155/) (2024)
- [GRAPHMOE: Amplifying Cognitive Depth of Mixture-of-Experts Network via Introducing Self-Rethinking Mechanism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.07890/) (2025)
- [Loki's Dance of Illusions: A Comprehensive Survey of Hallucination in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02870/) (2025)
- [REFLECT: Intervention-Supported Error Attribution for Silent Failures in LLM Agent Traces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.09071/) (2026)
- [SHARP: Synthesizing High-quality Aligned Reasoning Problems for Large Reasoning Models Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14147/) (2025)
- [Survey of GenAI for Automotive Software Development: From Requirements to Executable Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15025/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large language models (LLMs) often exhibit deficient reasoning or generate hallucinations. To address these, studies prefixed with "Self-" such as Self-Consistency, Self-Improve, and Self-Refine have been initiated. They share a commonality: involving LLMs evaluating and updating themselves. Nonetheless, these efforts lack a unified perspective on summarization, as existing surveys predominantly focus on categorization. In this paper, we use a unified perspective of internal consistency, offering explanations for reasoning deficiencies and hallucinations. Internal consistency refers to the consistency in expressions among LLMs' latent, decoding, or response layers based on sampling methodologies. Then, we introduce an effective theoretical framework capable of mining internal consistency, named Self-Feedback. This framework consists of two modules: Self-Evaluation and Self-Update. The former captures internal consistency signals, while the latter leverages the signals to enhance either the model's response or the model itself. This framework has been employed in numerous studies. We systematically classify these studies by tasks and lines of work; summarize relevant evaluation methods and benchmarks; and delve into the concern, "Does Self-Feedback Really Work?" We also propose several critical viewpoints, including the "Hourglass Evolution of Internal Consistency", "Consistency Is (Almost) Correctness" hypothesis, and "The Paradox of Latent and Explicit Reasoning". The relevant resources are open-sourced at https://github.com/IAAR-Shanghai/ICSFSurvey.