# CSCE: Boosting LLM Reasoning by Simultaneous Enhancing of Causal Significance and Consistency

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.17174 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17174/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Prompting and chain-of-thought reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 15 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Sep 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Prompting and chain-of-thought reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/prompting-and-chain-of-thought-reasoning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14168/) (2021)
- [Mistral 7B](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06825/) (2023)
- [Mixtral of Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04088/) (2024)
- [Reasoning with Language Model is Planning with World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14992/) (2023)
- [Textbooks Are All You Need II: phi-1.5 technical report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.05463/) (2023)
- [Logic-LM: Empowering Large Language Models with Symbolic Solvers for Faithful Logical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.12295/) (2023)
- [MathPrompter: Mathematical Reasoning using Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05398/) (2023)
- [Polyjuice: Generating Counterfactuals for Explaining, Evaluating, and Improving Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.00288/) (2021)
- [Evaluating the Logical Reasoning Ability of ChatGPT and GPT-4](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03439/) (2023)
- [Are Large Language Models Really Good Logical Reasoners? A Comprehensive Evaluation and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09841/) (2023)
- [Beyond Chain-of-Thought, Effective Graph-of-Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16582/) (2023)
- [How Likely Do LLMs with CoT Mimic Human Reasoning?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.16048/) (2024)
- [RoT: Enhancing Large Language Models with Reflection on Search Trees](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.05449/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [LLM-based Agents Suffer from Hallucinations: A Survey of Taxonomy, Methods, and Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.18970/) (2025)
- [CreDes: Causal Reasoning Enhancement and Dual-End Searching for Solving Long-Range Reasoning Problems using LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.01696/) (2024)
- [Efficient Knowledge Transfer in Multi-Task Learning through Task-Adaptive Low-Rank Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.00009/) (2025)
- [CCL: Collaborative Curriculum Learning for Sparse-Reward Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning via Co-evolutionary Task Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07854/) (2025)
- [Graph-Driven Multimodal Feature Learning Framework for Apparent Personality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.11515/) (2025)
- [GAME: Learning Multimodal Interactions via Graph Structures for Personality Trait Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.03846/) (2025)
- [GaMNet: A Hybrid Network with Gabor Fusion and NMamba for Efficient 3D Glioma Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05520/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Chain-based reasoning methods like chain of thought (CoT) play a rising role in solving reasoning tasks for large language models (LLMs). However, the causal hallucinations between a step of reasoning and corresponding state transitions are becoming a significant obstacle to advancing LLMs' reasoning capabilities, especially in long-range reasoning tasks. This paper proposes a non-chain-based reasoning framework for simultaneous consideration of causal significance and consistency, i.e., the Causal Significance and Consistency Enhancer (CSCE). We customize LLM's loss function utilizing treatment effect assessments to enhance its reasoning ability from two aspects: causal significance and consistency. This ensures that the model captures essential causal relationships and maintains robust and consistent performance across various scenarios. Additionally, we transform the reasoning process from the cascading multiple one-step reasoning commonly used in Chain-Based methods, like CoT, to a causal-enhanced method that outputs the entire reasoning process in one go, further improving the model's reasoning efficiency. Extensive experiments show that our method improves both the reasoning success rate and speed. These improvements further demonstrate that non-chain-based methods can also aid LLMs in completing reasoning tasks.