Wait, We Don't Need to "Wait"! Removing Thinking Tokens Improves
  Reasoning Efficiency
Authors: name: Chenlong Wang; name: Yuanning Feng; name: Dongping Chen; name: Zhaoyang Chu; name: Ranjay Krishna; name: Tianyi Zhou
Published: 2025-06-10 01:54:04

Abstract: Recent advances in large reasoning models have enabled complex, step-by-step
reasoning but often introduce significant overthinking, resulting in verbose
and redundant outputs that hinder efficiency. In this study, we examine whether
explicit self-reflection, signaled by tokens such as "Wait" and "Hmm", is
necessary for advanced reasoning. We propose NoWait, a simple yet effective
approach that disables explicit self-reflection by suppressing these tokens
during inference. Extensive experiments on ten benchmarks across textual,
visual, and video reasoning tasks show that NoWait reduces chain-of-thought
trajectory length by up to 27%-51% in five R1-style model series, without
compromising model utility. NoWait thus offers a plug-and-play solution for
efficient and utility-preserving multimodal reasoning.