ResearchResearch paperLarge Language Models1 source · Oct 9, 2026

Task Context Shapes Component Roles in Language Models

Large language models reuse the same attention heads across tasks, but identifying these shared heads does not explain what they do differently in each task.

Key points

  • A natural source of inspiration is task-dependent interactions among shared brain regions, which motivate a network view of language-model computation.
  • Here, we compare fixed model components across tasks using identical graph facts, statements specifying which directed connections are present.
  • We measure how interventions affect attention heads and the activation state in later layers (influence), as well as the answer (importance).
  • These findings show that task context changes both which graph facts the shared components respond to and how their outputs affect later computation.

Sources (1)

  • [1]Task Context Shapes Component Roles in Language Models
    arXiv (AI, ML, NLP, CV, robotics, multi-agent) · Oct 9, 05:40 PM
    Large language models reuse the same attention heads across tasks, but identifying these shared heads does not explain what they do differently in each task.
    A natural source of inspiration is task-dependent interactions among shared brain regions, which motivate a network view of language-model computation.

Extractive summary: sentences quoted from the sources.

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