A Pre-Specified Construction-Confirmation Test of Operation-Level Causal Transfer Across Finite Isomorphic Symbolic Domains
Not on the map. Why?
Abstract (arXiv)
Behavioral accuracy, linear decodability, and successful activation interventions do not by themselves show that a model carries an operation-level structure from one symbolic domain to another. We ask a narrower question in finite isomorphic state spaces: if the hidden-state difference between two operations is estimated separately for each source input, does adding that difference to a mapped recipient input move the model toward the corresponding recipient answer? The design compares this input-specific intervention with wrong-operation, norm-matched random, and no-op controls, and separates candidate construction from an independently isolated confirmation split. On a frozen Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct model at layers 20--21, one route--domain--operation candidate from a family pre-specified and frozen before confirmation access, transparent | integer_mod16--letters16 | successor->predecessor, passed both PyVene splits; its confirmation intersection--union p-value was 0.000198 and its 36-family Holm-adjusted p-value was 0.006943. A subsequent NNsight 0.7.0 experiment, pre-specified and frozen before its confirmation access, tested only this selected prompt route, without candidate or layer reselection. It reproduced all 12 confirmation effect estimates, confidence intervals, and exact sign-flip p-values numerically; its 36-family Holm-adjusted p-value was 0.007141. The result is therefore limited to one prompt route and one candidate, replicated across two intervention implementations on one model revision and one layer interval. It does not establish cross-model generalization, full-family backend independence, domain-general transfer, or algebraic invariance.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 19 of its 20 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Aug 2026.
Builds on
19 of 20 references.
References · 19
- 2023Steering Language Models With Activation Engineeringcited by 922
- 2022Emergent World Representations: Exploring a Sequence Model Trained on a Synthetic Taskcited by 431
- 2021Causal Abstractions of Neural Networkscited by 422
- 2023In-Context Learning Creates Task Vectorscited by 312
- 2023Function Vectors in Large Language Modelscited by 308
- 2023In-context Vectors: Making In Context Learning More Effective and Controllable Through Latent Space Steeringcited by 245
- 2023Finding Alignments Between Interpretable Causal Variables and Distributed Neural Representationscited by 209
- 2023Successor Heads: Recurring, Interpretable Attention Heads In The Wildcited by 77
- 2025Emergent Symbolic Mechanisms Support Abstract Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 31
- 2024mOthello: When Do Cross-Lingual Representation Alignment and Cross-Lingual Transfer Emerge in Multilingual Models?cited by 21
- 2026Causality neq Invariance: Function and Concept Vectors in LLMscited by 8
- 2025AlgoTrace: Algorithmic Primitives and Compositional Geometry of Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 7
7 more
- 2026Emergent Analogical Reasoning in Transformerscited by 5
- 2026MetaOthello: A Controlled Study of Multiple World Models in Transformerscited by 4
- 2024Transport of Algebraic Structure to Latent Embeddingscited by 2
- 2026Categorical Perception in Large Language Model Hidden States: Structural Warping at Digit-Count Boundariescited by 2
- 2026Can Large Language Models Generalize Procedures Across Representations?cited by 1
- 2026Single-Position Intervention Fails: Distributed Output Templates Drive In-Context Learningcited by 1
- 2026Are Arithmetic Heuristic Neurons Form-Invariant? A Mechanistic Analysis of Symbols, Text, and Code in LLMscited by 1
Built on by
Not cited yet.