PATS: Process-Level Adaptive Thinking Mode Switching
Authors: name: Yi Wang, name: Junxiao Liu, name: Shimao Zhang, name: Jiajun Chen, name: Shujian Huang

Current large-language models (LLMs) typically adopt a fixed reasoning
strategy, either simple or complex, for all questions, regardless of their
difficulty. This neglect of variation in task and reasoning process complexity
leads to an imbalance between performance and efficiency. Existing methods
attempt to implement training-free fast-slow thinking system switching to
handle problems of varying difficulty, but are limited by coarse-grained
solution-level strategy adjustments. To address this issue, we propose a novel
reasoning paradigm: Process-Level Adaptive Thinking Mode Switching (PATS),
which enables LLMs to dynamically adjust their reasoning strategy based on the
difficulty of each step, optimizing the balance between accuracy and
computational efficiency. Our approach integrates Process Reward Models (PRMs)
with Beam Search, incorporating progressive mode switching and bad-step penalty
mechanisms. Experiments on diverse mathematical benchmarks demonstrate that our
methodology achieves high accuracy while maintaining moderate token usage. This
study emphasizes the significance of process-level, difficulty-aware reasoning
strategy adaptation, offering valuable insights into efficient inference for
LLMs.