{"paper":{"title":"Structure Enables Effective Self-Localization of Errors in LLMs","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"cs.AI","authors_text":"Akshayaa Magesh, Ankur Samanta, Ayush Jain, Boris Vidolov, Daniel Jiang, Jalaj Bhandari, Kaveh Hassani, Kavosh Asadi, Paul Sajda, Yonathan Efroni, Youliang Yu","submitted_at":"2026-02-02T18:15:59Z","abstract_excerpt":"Self-correction in language models remains elusive. In this work, we explore whether language models can explicitly localize errors in incorrect reasoning, as a path toward building AI systems that can effectively correct themselves. We introduce a prompting method that structures reasoning as discrete, semantically coherent thought steps, and show that models can localize errors more reliably within this structure than in conventional, unstructured chain-of-thought reasoning. Motivated by how the human brain monitors errors at discrete decision points and resamples alternatives, we introduce "},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2602.02416","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2602.02416/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}