mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Counterfactual-Consistency Prompting for Relative Temporal Understanding in Large Language Models

arXiv 2502.11425 ↗First posted 17 Feb 2025cs.CL cs.AIcited by 5

On the map: LLM reasoning → Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning

Abstract (arXiv)

Despite the advanced capabilities of large language models (LLMs), their temporal reasoning ability remains underdeveloped. Prior works have highlighted this limitation, particularly in maintaining temporal consistency when understanding events. For example, models often confuse mutually exclusive temporal relations like ``before'' and ``after'' between events and make inconsistent predictions. In this work, we tackle the issue of temporal inconsistency in LLMs by proposing a novel counterfactual prompting approach. Our method generates counterfactual questions and enforces collective constraints, enhancing the model's consistency. We evaluate our method on multiple datasets, demonstrating significant improvements in event ordering for explicit and implicit events and temporal commonsense understanding by effectively addressing temporal inconsistencies.

Key facts. Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 22 of its 29 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 17 Feb 2025.

Builds on

22 of 29 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024Narrative-of-Thought: Improving Temporal Reasoning of Large Language Models via Recounted Narratives7 Oct
  2. 2024Timo: Towards Better Temporal Reasoning for Language Models20 Jun

Other references · 20

  1. 2023Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttentioncited by 5,944
  2. 2022Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 5,708
  3. 2023Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedbackcited by 3,442
  4. 2023Improving Factuality and Reasoning in Language Models through Multiagent Debatecited by 1,784
  5. 2019How Can We Know What Language Models Know?cited by 959
  6. 2019Learning the Difference that Makes a Difference with Counterfactually-Augmented Datacited by 439
  7. 2024To CoT or not to CoT? Chain-of-thought helps mainly on math and symbolic reasoningcited by 263
  8. 2021A Dataset for Answering Time-Sensitive Questionscited by 154
  9. 2019Reducing Sentiment Bias in Language Models via Counterfactual Evaluationcited by 148
  10. 2019"Going on a vacation" takes longer than "Going for a walk": A Study of Temporal Commonsense Understandingcited by 123
  11. 2020Identifying Spurious Correlations for Robust Text Classificationcited by 59
  12. 2020Temporal Reasoning on Implicit Events from Distant Supervisioncited by 58
8 more
  1. 2023Are Large Language Models Temporally Grounded?cited by 27
  2. 2019Deep Structured Neural Network for Event Temporal Relation Extractioncited by 25
  3. 2023Improving Large Language Models in Event Relation Logical Predictioncited by 17
  4. 2024Counterfactual Debating with Preset Stances for Hallucination Elimination of LLMscited by 17
  5. 2021Probing Language Models for Understanding of Temporal Expressionscited by 16
  6. 2023Question Answering as Programming for Solving Time-Sensitive Questionscited by 14
  7. 2024Large Language Models are Contrastive Reasonerscited by 11
  8. 2024HARP: Hesitation-Aware Reframing in Transformer Inference Passcited by 3

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 2; 2026: 3.

5 papers.

  1. 2025Time-R1: Towards Comprehensive Temporal Reasoning in LLMscited by 25
  2. 2025"Lost-in-the-Later": Framework for Quantifying Contextual Grounding in Large Language Modelscited by 5
  3. 2026Better Think Thrice: Learning to Reason Causally with Double Counterfactual Consistencycited by 0
  4. 2026PredAct-Bench: Benchmarking Tool-Augmented Dialogue under Controlled Tool Noisecited by 0
  5. 2026Evaluating Temporal Reasoning in Large Language Models: Event Temporal Relation Extraction with Allen's Interval Algebra, Logical Consistency, and Relative Time in Narrativescited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025ChronoSense: Exploring Temporal Understanding in Large Language Models with Time Intervals of Events
  2. 2023MenatQA: A New Dataset for Testing the Temporal Comprehension and Reasoning Abilities of Large Language Models
  3. 2024Time Awareness in Large Language Models: Benchmarking Fact Recall Across Time
  4. 2026Teaching Large Language Models When Not to Know: Learning Temporal Critique for Ex-Ante Reasoning
  5. 2025TIME: A Multi-level Benchmark for Temporal Reasoning of LLMs in Real-World Scenarios
  6. 2025Temporal Referential Consistency: Do LLMs Favor Sequences Over Absolute Time References?
  7. 2023Prompting Large Language Models for Counterfactual Generation: An Empirical Study
  8. 2023TRAM: Benchmarking Temporal Reasoning for Large Language Models