# Language Models can perform Single-Utterance Self-Correction of Perturbed Reasoning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15894 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15894/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 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 25 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Jun 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, 25 of 25)

- [Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14168/) (2021)
- [Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03874/) (2021)
- [Let's Verify Step by Step](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.20050/) (2023)
- [Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17651/) (2023)
- [Constitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08073/) (2022)
- [The Curious Case of Neural Text Degeneration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.09751/) (2019)
- [Improving Factuality and Reasoning in Language Models through Multiagent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14325/) (2023)
- [Least-to-Most Prompting Enables Complex Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10625/) (2022)
- [Solving Quantitative Reasoning Problems with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.14858/) (2022)
- [Qwen2.5-Math Technical Report: Toward Mathematical Expert Model via Self-Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12122/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models Cannot Self-Correct Reasoning Yet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01798/) (2023)
- [Encouraging Divergent Thinking in Large Language Models through Multi-Agent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19118/) (2023)
- [Solving math word problems with process- and outcome-based feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14275/) (2022)
- [Show Your Work: Scratchpads for Intermediate Computation with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.00114/) (2021)
- [Large Language Models Can Be Easily Distracted by Irrelevant Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00093/) (2023)
- [CRITIC: Large Language Models Can Self-Correct with Tool-Interactive Critiquing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11738/) (2023)
- [Training Language Models to Self-Correct via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12917/) (2024)
- [Self-critiquing models for assisting human evaluators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.05802/) (2022)
- [Generating Sequences by Learning to Self-Correct](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.00053/) (2022)
- [ZebraLogic: On the Scaling Limits of LLMs for Logical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.01100/) (2025)
- [Take a Step Back: Evoking Reasoning via Abstraction in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06117/) (2023)
- [Shepherd: A Critic for Language Model Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04592/) (2023)
- [Making Language Models Better Tool Learners with Execution Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13068/) (2023)
- [CritiqueLLM: Towards an Informative Critique Generation Model for Evaluation of Large Language Model Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18702/) (2023)
- [Tools Fail: Detecting Silent Errors in Faulty Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19228/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [The Horizon Gap: Planning, Memory, Execution, Training, and Evaluation for Long-Horizon LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.06663/) (2026)
- [Cliff Tokens: Identifying Single-Token Failure Triggers in LLM Mathematical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.25524/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive mathematical reasoning capabilities, yet their performance remains brittle to minor variations in problem description and prompting strategy. Furthermore, reasoning is vulnerable to sampling-induced errors which autoregressive models must primarily address using self-correction via additionally-generated tokens. To better understand self-correction capabilities of recent models, we conduct experiments measuring models' ability to self-correct synthetic perturbations introduced into their Chain of Thought (CoT) reasoning. We observe robust single-utterance intrinsic self-correction behavior across a range of open-weight models and datasets, ranging from subtle, implicit corrections to explicit acknowledgments and corrections of errors. Our findings suggest that LLMs, including those not finetuned for long CoT, may possess stronger intrinsic self-correction capabilities than commonly shown in the literature. The presence of this ability suggests that recent "reasoning" model work involves amplification of traits already meaningfully present in models.