# MTMT: Consolidating Multiple Thinking Modes to Form a Thought Tree for Strengthening LLM

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.03987 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03987/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 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 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Dec 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)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11171/) (2022)
- [Gemini 1.5: Unlocking multimodal understanding across millions of tokens of context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05530/) (2024)
- [TruthfulQA: Measuring How Models Mimic Human Falsehoods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07958/) (2021)
- [GPQA: A Graduate-Level Google-Proof Q&A Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12022/) (2023)
- [Self-RAG: Learning to Retrieve, Generate, and Critique through Self-Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11511/) (2023)
- [Least-to-Most Prompting Enables Complex Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10625/) (2022)
- [TextGrad: Automatic "Differentiation" via Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07496/) (2024)
- [Take a Step Back: Evoking Reasoning via Abstraction in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06117/) (2023)
- [Distilling System 2 into System 1](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06023/) (2024)
- [System 2 Attention (is something you might need too)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11829/) (2023)
- [Beyond Chain-of-Thought, Effective Graph-of-Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16582/) (2023)
- [Let's Do a Thought Experiment: Using Counterfactuals to Improve Moral Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14308/) (2023)
- [Tree-of-Mixed-Thought: Combining Fast and Slow Thinking for Multi-hop Visual Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09658/) (2023)
- [An Examination on the Effectiveness of Divide-and-Conquer Prompting in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05359/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Understanding LLM Scientific Reasoning through Promptings and Model's Explanation on the Answers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.01482/) (2025)
- [Socratic-PRMBench: Benchmarking Process Reward Models with Systematic Reasoning Patterns](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23474/) (2025)
- [One More Question is Enough, Expert Question Decomposition (EQD) Model for Domain Quantitative Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.01526/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large language models (LLMs) have shown limitations in tasks requiring complex logical reasoning and multi-step problem-solving. To address these challenges, researchers have employed carefully designed prompts and flowcharts, simulating human cognitive processes to enhance LLM performance, such as the Chain of Thought approach. In this paper, we introduce MTMT (Multi-thinking Modes Tree), a novel method that interacts with LLMs to construct a thought tree, simulating various advanced cognitive processes, including but not limited to association, counterfactual thinking, task decomposition, and comparison. By breaking down the original complex task into simpler sub-questions, MTMT facilitates easier problem-solving for LLMs, enabling more effective utilization of the latent knowledge within LLMs. We evaluate the performance of MTMT under different parameter configurations, using GPT-4o mini as the base model. Our results demonstrate that integrating multiple modes of thinking significantly enhances the ability of LLMs to handle complex tasks.