Weight-of-Thought Reasoning: Exploring Neural Network Weights for Enhanced LLM Reasoning

Saif Punjwani, Larry Heck


Abstract
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable reasoning capabilities when prompted with strategies such as Chain-of-Thought (CoT). However, these approaches focus on token-level output without considering internal weight dynamics. We introduce Weight-of-Thought (WoT) reasoning, a novel approach that examines neural network weights before inference to identify reasoning pathways. Unlike existing methods, WoT explores the weight space through graph-based message passing, multi-step reasoning processes, and attention mechanisms. Our implementation creates an interconnected graph of reasoning nodes. Experiments on diverse reasoning tasks (syllogistic, mathematical, algebraic, combinatorial, and geometric) demonstrate that WoT achieves superior performance compared to traditional methods, particularly for complex problems. This approach leads to both improved performance and greater interpretability of the reasoning process, offering a promising direction for enhancing LLM reasoning capabilities.
Anthology ID:
2025.realm-1.33
Volume:
Proceedings of the 1st Workshop for Research on Agent Language Models (REALM 2025)
Month:
July
Year:
2025
Address:
Vienna, Austria
Editors:
Ehsan Kamalloo, Nicolas Gontier, Xing Han Lu, Nouha Dziri, Shikhar Murty, Alexandre Lacoste
Venues:
REALM | WS
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Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
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Pages:
471–485
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/display_plenaries/2025.realm-1.33/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Saif Punjwani and Larry Heck. 2025. Weight-of-Thought Reasoning: Exploring Neural Network Weights for Enhanced LLM Reasoning. In Proceedings of the 1st Workshop for Research on Agent Language Models (REALM 2025), pages 471–485, Vienna, Austria. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Weight-of-Thought Reasoning: Exploring Neural Network Weights for Enhanced LLM Reasoning (Punjwani & Heck, REALM 2025)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/display_plenaries/2025.realm-1.33.pdf