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Nudging Hidden States: Training-Free Model Steering for Chain-of-Thought Reasoning in Large Audio-Language Models

Lok-Lam Ieong, Chia-Chien Chen, Chih-Kai Yang, Yu-Han Huang, An-Yu Cheng, Hung-yi Lee · Mar 15, 2026 · Citations: 0

Automatic Metrics
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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

Validate the evaluation procedure and quality controls in the full paper before operational use.

Evidence quality

Low

Derived from extracted protocol signals and abstract evidence.

Abstract

Chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting has been extended to large audio-language models (LALMs) to elicit reasoning, yet enhancing its effectiveness without training remains challenging. We study inference-time model steering as a training-free approach to improve LALM reasoning. We introduce three strategies using diverse information sources and evaluate them across four LALMs and four benchmarks. Results show general accuracy gains up to 4.4% over CoT prompting. Notably, we identify a cross-modal transfer where steering vectors derived from few text samples effectively guide speech-based reasoning, demonstrating high data efficiency. We also examine hyperparameter sensitivity to understand the robustness of these approaches. Our findings position model steering as a practical direction for strengthening LALM reasoning.

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.
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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

A secondary eval reference to pair with stronger protocol papers.

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

Detected

Usefulness for eval research

Adjacent candidate

Extraction confidence 35%

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.

"Chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting has been extended to large audio-language models (LALMs) to elicit reasoning, yet enhancing its effectiveness without training remains challenging."

Evaluation Modes

partial

Automatic Metrics

Includes extracted eval setup.

"Chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting has been extended to large audio-language models (LALMs) to elicit reasoning, yet enhancing its effectiveness without training remains challenging."

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

No explicit QC controls found.

"Chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting has been extended to large audio-language models (LALMs) to elicit reasoning, yet enhancing its effectiveness without training remains challenging."

Benchmarks / Datasets

missing

Not extracted

No benchmark anchors detected.

"Chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting has been extended to large audio-language models (LALMs) to elicit reasoning, yet enhancing its effectiveness without training remains challenging."

Reported Metrics

partial

Accuracy

Useful for evaluation criteria comparison.

"Results show general accuracy gains up to 4.4% over CoT prompting."

Human Feedback Details

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

Evaluation Details

  • Evaluation modes: Automatic Metrics
  • 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

accuracy

Research Brief

Metadata summary

Chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting has been extended to large audio-language models (LALMs) to elicit reasoning, yet enhancing its effectiveness without training remains challenging.

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

Key Takeaways

  • Chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting has been extended to large audio-language models (LALMs) to elicit reasoning, yet enhancing its effectiveness without training remains challenging.
  • We study inference-time model steering as a training-free approach to improve LALM reasoning.
  • We introduce three strategies using diverse information sources and evaluate them across four LALMs and four benchmarks.

Researcher Actions

  • Compare this paper against nearby papers in the same arXiv category before using it for protocol decisions.
  • Validate inferred eval signals (Automatic metrics) against the full paper.
  • 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

Accuracy

Research Summary

Contribution Summary

  • We introduce three strategies using diverse information sources and evaluate them across four LALMs and four benchmarks.
  • Results show general accuracy gains up to 4.4% over CoT prompting.

Why It Matters For Eval

  • We introduce three strategies using diverse information sources and evaluate them across four LALMs and four benchmarks.

Researcher Checklist

  • Gap: Human feedback protocol is explicit

    No explicit human feedback protocol detected.

  • Pass: Evaluation mode is explicit

    Detected: Automatic Metrics

  • 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.

  • Pass: Metric reporting is present

    Detected: accuracy

Related Papers

Papers are ranked by protocol overlap, extraction signal alignment, and semantic proximity.

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