{
  "id": "2602.08783",
  "title": "Dynamics Within Latent Chain-of-Thought: An Empirical Study of Causal Structure",
  "authors": "Zirui Li, Xuefeng Bai, Kehai Chen, Yizhi Li, Jian Yang, Chenghua Lin, Min Zhang",
  "first_public": "2026-02-09",
  "added_at": "2026-11-02",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "arxiv": "2602.08783",
  "paper_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.08783",
  "html_url": "https://arxiv.org/html/2602.08783v3",
  "lens": [
    "analysis",
    "continuous"
  ],
  "representation": [
    "continuous-state",
    "hidden-state"
  ],
  "computation": [
    "token-wise"
  ],
  "training": [
    "analysis-only"
  ],
  "questions": [
    "interpretability",
    "evaluation",
    "limitations"
  ],
  "evidence": [
    "empirical",
    "mechanistic"
  ],
  "modality": [
    "language"
  ],
  "summary": "Treats intermediate latent steps as variables that can be replaced and recomputed. Tests Coconut and CODI to determine which steps affect answers, how changes propagate, and when the model commits to one answer.",
  "provenance": "Primary-source literature review, 2026-11-02",
  "author_names": [
    "Zirui Li",
    "Xuefeng Bai",
    "Kehai Chen",
    "Yizhi Li",
    "Jian Yang",
    "Chenghua Lin",
    "Min Zhang"
  ],
  "record_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2602.08783/",
  "legacy_record_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/#paper-2602-08783",
  "citation_date": "2026-02-09",
  "json_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2602.08783/record.json",
  "markdown_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2602.08783/index.md",
  "bibtex_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2602.08783/citation.bib",
  "csl_url": "https://latent-implicit-thinking.github.io/papers/2602.08783/citation.csl.json",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.08783"
}