# Recursive Decomposition of Logical Thoughts: Framework for Superior Reasoning and Knowledge Propagation in Large Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.02026 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.02026/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 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 41 of its 67 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Jan 2025.

## 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 41)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [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)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11171/) (2022)
- [Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11366/) (2023)
- [Training a Helpful and Harmless Assistant with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.05862/) (2022)
- [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)
- [Qwen2 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.10671/) (2024)
- [Least-to-Most Prompting Enables Complex Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10625/) (2022)
- [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)
- [Graph of Thoughts: Solving Elaborate Problems with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09687/) (2023)
- [Describe, Explain, Plan and Select: Interactive Planning with Large Language Models Enables Open-World Multi-Task Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.01560/) (2023)
- [INSIDE: LLMs' Internal States Retain the Power of Hallucination Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03744/) (2024)
- [Generating Sequences by Learning to Self-Correct](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.00053/) (2022)
- [Exploring Collaboration Mechanisms for LLM Agents: A Social Psychology View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02124/) (2023)
- [REFINER: Reasoning Feedback on Intermediate Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01904/) (2023)
- [Self-Evaluation Guided Beam Search for Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.00633/) (2023)
- [Co-Writing Screenplays and Theatre Scripts with Language Models: An Evaluation by Industry Professionals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14958/) (2022)
- [MediQ: Question-Asking LLMs and a Benchmark for Reliable Interactive Clinical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.00922/) (2024)
- [Chain of Thoughtlessness? An Analysis of CoT in Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04776/) (2024)
- [Small LLMs Are Weak Tool Learners: A Multi-LLM Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.07324/) (2024)
- [Algorithm of Thoughts: Enhancing Exploration of Ideas in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10379/) (2023)
- [Demystifying Chains, Trees, and Graphs of Thoughts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14295/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models Are Not Strong Abstract Reasoners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19555/) (2023)
- [A Systematic Survey of Text Summarization: From Statistical Methods to Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11289/) (2024)
- [A Survey of Prompt Engineering Methods in Large Language Models for Different NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12994/) (2024)
- [Rainier: Reinforced Knowledge Introspector for Commonsense Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03078/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Accelerating Training Speed of Tiny Recursive Models with Curriculum Guided Adaptive Recursion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.08653/) (2025)
- [MARBLE: A Multi-Agent Rule-Based LLM Reasoning Engine for Accident Severity Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.04893/) (2025)
- [VERIFY-RL: Verifiable Recursive Decomposition for Reinforcement Learning in Mathematical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.07559/) (2026)
- [Epistemic Policy Divergence in Multi-Turn LLM Contamination: A Protocol-Gradient Investigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.35308/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Enhancing the reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models remains a critical challenge in artificial intelligence. We introduce RDoLT, Recursive Decomposition of Logical Thought prompting, a novel framework that significantly boosts LLM reasoning performance. RDoLT is built on three key innovations: (1) recursively breaking down complex reasoning tasks into sub-tasks of progressive complexity; (2) employing an advanced selection and scoring mechanism to identify the most promising reasoning thoughts; and (3) integrating a knowledge propagation module that mimics human learning by keeping track of strong and weak thoughts for information propagation. Our approach was evaluated across multiple benchmarks, including GSM8K, SVAMP, MultiArith, LastLetterConcatenation, and Gaokao2023 Math. The results demonstrate that RDoLT consistently outperforms existing state-of-the-art techniques, achieving a 90.98 percent accuracy on GSM8K with ChatGPT-4, surpassing state-of-the-art techniques by 6.28 percent. Similar improvements were observed on other benchmarks, with accuracy gains ranging from 5.5 percent to 6.75 percent. These findings highlight RDoLT's potential to advance prompt engineering, offering a more effective and generalizable approach to complex reasoning tasks.