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Don't Lose Focus: Activation Steering via Key-Orthogonal Projections

Haoyan Luo, Mateo Espinosa Zarlenga, Mateja Jamnik · May 7, 2026 · Citations: 0

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How to use this page

Low trust

Use this as background context only. Do not make protocol decisions from this page alone.

Best use

Background context only

What to verify

Read the full paper before copying any benchmark, metric, or protocol choices.

Evidence quality

Low

Derived from extracted protocol signals and abstract evidence.

Abstract

Activation steering controls LLM behaviour towards target behaviour by intervening in internal representations, yet it often degrades reasoning and retrieval performance. We argue that a primary cause of this trade-off is attention rerouting: steering vectors alter query-key matching, shifting attention away from contextually important tokens toward less informative ones. To address this, we propose Steering via Key-Orthogonal Projections (SKOP), a steering method that constrains harmful attention rerouting without eliminating steering efficacy. SKOP achieves this by preserving attention patterns on a small set of focus tokens the model relies on for reasoning and retrieval, while allowing redistribution among less critical tail tokens. Across multiple steering benchmarks, we show that SKOP achieves the best joint steering-utility trade-off, reducing utility degradation by 5-7x while retaining over 95% of vanilla steering efficacy. Our results further suggest that, in long-context retrieval settings where vanilla steering approaches are ineffective, SKOP can maintain robust performance by avoiding attention rerouting.

Abstract-only analysis — low confidence

All signals on this page are inferred from the abstract only and may be inaccurate. Do not use this page as a primary protocol reference.

  • This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.
  • The available metadata is too thin to trust this as a primary source.
  • The abstract does not clearly describe the evaluation setup.
  • The abstract does not clearly name benchmarks or metrics.
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Should You Rely On This Paper?

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

Background context only.

Main weakness

This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.

Trust level

Low

Usefulness score

0/100 • Low

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Human Feedback Signal

Not explicit in abstract metadata

Evaluation Signal

Weak / implicit signal

Usefulness for eval research

Adjacent candidate

Extraction confidence 15%

If you are doing eval pipeline work, start here:

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What We Could Verify

These are the protocol signals we could actually recover from the available paper metadata. Use them to decide whether this paper is worth deeper reading.

Human Feedback Types

missing

None explicit

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

"Activation steering controls LLM behaviour towards target behaviour by intervening in internal representations, yet it often degrades reasoning and retrieval performance."

Evaluation Modes

missing

None explicit

Validate eval design from full paper text.

"Activation steering controls LLM behaviour towards target behaviour by intervening in internal representations, yet it often degrades reasoning and retrieval performance."

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

No explicit QC controls found.

"Activation steering controls LLM behaviour towards target behaviour by intervening in internal representations, yet it often degrades reasoning and retrieval performance."

Benchmarks / Datasets

missing

Not extracted

No benchmark anchors detected.

"Activation steering controls LLM behaviour towards target behaviour by intervening in internal representations, yet it often degrades reasoning and retrieval performance."

Reported Metrics

missing

Not extracted

No metric anchors detected.

"Activation steering controls LLM behaviour towards target behaviour by intervening in internal representations, yet it often degrades reasoning and retrieval performance."

Human Feedback Details

  • Uses human feedback: No
  • Feedback types: None
  • Rater population: Not reported
  • Expertise required: General

Evaluation Details

  • Evaluation modes:
  • Agentic eval: None
  • Quality controls: Not reported
  • Evidence quality: Low
  • Use this page as: Background context only

Protocol And Measurement Signals

Benchmarks / Datasets

No benchmark or dataset names were extracted from the available abstract.

Reported Metrics

No metric terms were extracted from the available abstract.

Research Brief

Metadata summary

Activation steering controls LLM behaviour towards target behaviour by intervening in internal representations, yet it often degrades reasoning and retrieval performance.

Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.

Key Takeaways

  • Activation steering controls LLM behaviour towards target behaviour by intervening in internal representations, yet it often degrades reasoning and retrieval performance.
  • We argue that a primary cause of this trade-off is attention rerouting: steering vectors alter query-key matching, shifting attention away from contextually important tokens toward less informative ones.
  • To address this, we propose Steering via Key-Orthogonal Projections (SKOP), a steering method that constrains harmful attention rerouting without eliminating steering efficacy.

Researcher Actions

  • Compare this paper against nearby papers in the same arXiv category before using it for protocol decisions.
  • Check the full text for explicit evaluation design choices (raters, protocol, and metrics).
  • Use related-paper links to find stronger protocol-specific references.

Caveats

  • Generated from abstract + metadata only; no PDF parsing.
  • Signals below are heuristic and may miss details reported outside the abstract.

Recommended Queries

Research Summary

Contribution Summary

  • To address this, we propose Steering via Key-Orthogonal Projections (SKOP), a steering method that constrains harmful attention rerouting without eliminating steering efficacy.
  • Across multiple steering benchmarks, we show that SKOP achieves the best joint steering-utility trade-off, reducing utility degradation by 5-7x while retaining over 95% of vanilla steering efficacy.

Why It Matters For Eval

  • Across multiple steering benchmarks, we show that SKOP achieves the best joint steering-utility trade-off, reducing utility degradation by 5-7x while retaining over 95% of vanilla steering efficacy.

Researcher Checklist

  • Gap: Human feedback protocol is explicit

    No explicit human feedback protocol detected.

  • Gap: Evaluation mode is explicit

    No clear evaluation mode extracted.

  • Gap: Quality control reporting appears

    No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.

  • Gap: Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

    No benchmark/dataset anchor extracted from abstract.

  • Gap: Metric reporting is present

    No metric terms extracted.

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