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CounterBench: Evaluating and Improving Counterfactual Reasoning in

Large Language Models
YuefeiChen1 VivekK.Singh1 JingMa2 RuixiangTang1*
1RutgersUniversity 2CaseWesternReserveUniversity
Abstract Back.
6202 rpA 11 ]LC.sc[ 2v80011.2052:viXra Counterfactualreasoningiswidelyrecognized 74.5
Basic 58.5 Nested
------------------------------------------- -------------------- ------------- --- --- ----- ------------- ----- -------- ------ ---
as one of the most challenging and intricate
98.4 75.272.4 53. 0 76.078.4 94.0
aspectsofcausalityinartificialintelligence. In
54.8 5 0.8
thispaper,weevaluatetheperformanceoflarge
5 8 .8
65 . 6 50.8
languagemodels(LLMs)incounterfactualrea- 67.2
---------------------------------------- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---- ---- --- ---
70.8 72.4
soning. Incontrasttopreviousstudiesthatpri-
89.6 90.0
------------------------------------- --- --- --- --- --- ----- --- ----- --- ---
marilyfocusoncommonsensecausalreason- Cond. Joint
ing,whereLLMsoftenrelyonpriorknowledge
Our CoIn Standard
--- --- --- --- --- --- -------- --- -------- --- ---
forinference,wespecificallyassesstheirabil-
CausalCoT Solver
--- --- --- --- --- --- --------- --- ------ --- ---
itytoperformcounterfactualinferenceusinga
setofformalrules. Tosupportthisevaluation,
----------------- ------------------------ --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
Figure1: ComparisonofaccuracyscoresontheCoun-
weintroduceanewbenchmarkdataset,Coun- terBench dataset across different strategies: our pro-
terBench,comprising1.2Kcounterfactualrea-
posedCoInparadigmversusbaselineapproaches(Stan-
soningquestions. Thedatasetisdesignedwith
---------------- ------------------------ --- --- ----- --------- ---- ------- ------ ---------- ----
dard, CausalCoT (Jin et al., 2023), and Solver (Hua
varyinglevelsofdifficulty,diversecausalgraph et al., 2024)), evaluated using Gemini-1.5-flash. Our
structures,distincttypesofcounterfactualques-
CounterBenchdatasetincludesfivekindstypes. Basic
--- --- --- --- ------------------------------------------ --- --- --- --- --- -----
tions,andmultiplenonsensicalnamevariants. focusesonexploringhowasinglechangeinacausal
Ourexperimentsdemonstratethatcounterfac-
variable. Jointinvolvessimultaneouschangesinmul-
tualreasoningposesasignificantchallengefor
tiplecauses,Nestedinvolvesstepwisehypotheticalas-
LLMs,withmostmodelsperformingatlevels sumptionsaboutmultiplevariables. Conditionaleval-
comparabletorandomguessing. Toenhance
--------------------------- --- --------- --- -------------------------------------------- --- --- --- --- --- ---
uatescounterfactualsunderobservedconditions. And
LLM’scounterfactualreasoningability,wepro- Backdoorinvolvescounterfactualreasoninginthepres-
poseanovelreasoningparadigm,CoIn,which enceofbackdoorpathsthatcreateconfoundingbetween
guidesLLMsthroughiterativereasoningand
thetreatmentvariableandtheoutcome.
backtrackingtosystematicallyexplorecounter-
factual solutions. Experimental results show
------------------ -------------------- -------- ---- ------ ------- ----- --- ------- ----- -------
that our method significantly improves LLM
Koonce et al., 2011; Gow et al., 2016; Loi and
performanceoncounterfactualreasoningtasks
Rodrigues,2012). Forexample,aconsumerwho
--- --- --- --- ---------------- --- --- ----------------------- --- --- ---
andconsistentlyenhancesperformanceacross
declinedanextendedwarrantymaylaterwonder,
different LLMs. Our dataset is available at
--------- ----------------- ------------ --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
“WhatifIhadpurchasedit,couldIhaveavoidedthe
https://huggingface.co/datasets/CounterBench
/CounterBench. repaircosts?” Thisillustrateshowcounterfactual
reasoning guides decision-making by evaluating
-------------- --- --- --- --------------------------------------------- ------ --------------- --- ------ ----- ----------
1 Introduction missedopportunitiesandalternativeoutcomes(Kr-
ishnamurthy and Sivaraman, 2002). While tradi-
Counterfactualreasoning,residingatthepinnacle
tionalcausalinferencemethods(SharmaandKici-
ofPearl’sCausalHierarchy(PearlandMackenzie,
man, 2020; Chen et al., 2020; Feder et al., 2022)
--- --- --- --- ---- ----- ------- ---------- ----- --- ----------
2018),underpinsthe“whatif”inquiriesessentialto
haveenhancedthepredictiveaccuracy,robustness,
humancognitionanddecision-makingacrosscrit-
andexplainabilityofNLPmodels,recentprogress
icalfieldssuchashealthcare,business,publicad-
inLLMshasfurtherenrichedourabilitytocapture
ministration,andscience(Gvozdenovic´etal.,2021;
nuanced causal dependencies (Liu et al., 2024a;
--- --- --- --- ------- ------ ------------ --- ---- --- -----------
Kyrimietal.,2025;KasirzadehandSmart,2021;
Petronietal.,2019;Liangetal.,2024;Tarassow,
*CorrespondingEmail:ruixiang.tang@rutgers.edu 2023;Ma,2024;Liuetal.,2024b). Theseadvance-

mentsnotonlydemonstratesophisticatedreasoning cess,guidingLLMsthroughabduction,action,it- intasksrangingfromwritingtoprogrammingbut erativeprediction,andbacktrackingvalidationto also pave the way toward emulating human-like systematically formalize and explore counterfac- intelligenceandachievingartificialgeneralintelli- tual paths. This structured mechanism dynami- gence(LiandLi,2024;Alwin,2023;Sahota,2023; callyassessesthepromiseofeachinferencestep, Bubecketal.,2023). enabling reversion to more promising points and Despiterecentadvancements,progressincoun- ensuringlogicalconsistency,particularlyinlong- terfactual reasoning using LLMs remains con- chain causal dependencies. This systematic pro- strained by two primary challenges. First, there cesssubstantiallyimprovestheaccuracyofcoun- is currently no dedicated benchmark dataset for terfactualanalysis. ExperimentsonCounterBench rigorouslyevaluatingLLMs’performanceoncoun- demonstrate that CoIn achieves an accuracy of terfactualtasks,makingitdifficulttomeasurethe 89.9%,deliveringanearly20%improvementover models’ capacity to capture nuanced causal rela- Gemini-1.5-flashcomparedtoalternativestrategies tionships. Second,evenwithadvancedprompting (seeFigure1). Theframeworkofthisworkisillus- techniques,CausalCoT(Jinetal.,2023)andother tratedinFigure2. Thecontributionsofthiswork iterativemethods,LLMsoftenstruggletoproduce aresummarizedasfollows: logicallyconsistent,contextuallyappropriatecoun- terfactuals (Ma, 2024; Jin et al., 2023; Kıcıman • Webuildacomprehensivedataset,Counter- etal.,2023;Zecˇevic´ etal.,2023). Inresponse,this Bench. Thedatasetcontainsover1200long- paperfocusesontwokeyquestions: chaincomplexcounterfactualreasoningques- HowwelldoLLMshandlecounterfactualrea- tions. The dataset spans multiple difficulty soning? Theabsenceofastandardizedbenchmark levels,diversecausalgraphstructures,various datasethasimpededrigorousempiricalevaluation typesofcounterfactualquestions,andawide ofLLMs’capabilitiesincapturingintricatecausal range of nonsensical variant name combina- relationships within complex counterfactual rea- tions. soningtasks. Toaddressthis,wepresentCounter- Bench,acomprehensiveevaluationframeworkde- • WebenchmarkLLMswithvariousinference signedtoassesscounterfactualreasoningthrough strategies on CounterBench, and results re- 1.2Kquestionsencompassingvariousdomainsand vealthatmostexistingmodels(e.g.,GPT-4o reasoningtypes. Bysystematicallyevaluatingfive andDeepseek-V3)exhibitlimitedcapabilities keydimensions,itdemandsgenuinereasoningbe- inperformingcounterfactualinferencetasks. yondpatternrecognitionormemorizedresponses. Ourexperimentsexposenotableperformancelim- • WeproposeanovelreasoningparadigmCoIn itations in LLMs, even those equipped with ad- guides LLMs through abduction, action, it- vanced inference techniques. Most models like erative prediction, and backtracking valida- GPT-4oandDeepseek-V3achieveaccuracyofap- tiontosystematicallyformalizeandexplore proximately50%,equivalenttorandomguessing. counterfactual reasoning paths. It achieves Furthermore,ourevaluationofstate-of-the-artin- nearly90%accuracyonseveralstate-of-the- ference strategies shows only marginal improve- artLLMsevaluatedonCounterBench,repre- mentsoverbaselineperformanceformostmodels. sentinga20%improvementovertheprevious Themodelsconsistentlystrugglewithmaintaining bestbaseline. logicalcoherenceduringmulti-stepreasoningpro- cessesandaccuratelyhandlingcausalrelationships incomplexscenarios. 2 CounterBench How to improve LLMs’ counterfactual rea- soningabilities? Toadvancelargelanguagemod- Toevaluatethecounterfactualreasoningcapabili- els’counterfactualreasoningcapabilities,thispa- tiesofLLMs,weintroduceacomprehensivebench- per presents CoIn (Counterfactual Inference), a markingdatasetspecificallydesignedtomeasure novel approach that explicitly tackles the critical their ability to handle complex causal reasoning challengesofmulti-stepinference,whichremain tasks. This section details the structure of the unresolvedbypreviousmethods. CoInembedsa dataset,themethodologyforquerygeneration,and tailored search algorithm into the reasoning pro- thebenchmarkingresultsanalysis.

CounterBench Dataset Benchmarking LLMs CoIn Reasoning Strategy

Basic Standard Strategy Extraction
without Instruction
Joint
Abduction and Intervention Action
Nested Human Error
--- ------ ------------ --- --------------- -------- --- --- --- ---
Verification Solver Strategy Analysis
Forward Inference
Conditonal
Backdoor CausalCoT Strategy Back-tracking Validation
--- -------- --- --- ------------------ --- --- ------------------------ --- ---
Figure2: Illustrationoftheframework. WecreateCounterBench,adatasetfeaturingfivetypesofcounterfactual
questions(basic,joint,conditional,nested,andbackdoor). Basedonthisdataset,webenchmarkstate-of-the-art
LLMsusingvariousinferencestrategies,conductcomprehensiveerroranalysis,andproposeourCoInreasoning
frameworkfeaturingsystematicinferencewithvalidationmechanisms.
Type QueryTemplateExample Causalgraph
---- -------------------- --- --- --- --- --- ----------- --- ---
WeknowthatXcausesV1,V1causesV2,V2causesV3,andV3causesV4,
Basic
V4causesV5,V5causesY.WouldYoccurifnotXinsteadofX?
WeknowthatXcausesV1,V1causesV2,V2andV1togethercauseV3,
Joint V3causesV4,V4andXtogethercauseV5,andV5causesY.
----- ---------------------------------------------- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
WouldYoccurifnotXandnotV3?
WeknowthatXcausesV1,V1causesV2,V2andV1togethercauseV3,
V3causesV4,V4andV2togethercauseV5,andV5causesY.
Nested
AssumenotX,andbasedonthisassumption,furthersupposenotV4.
WouldYoccur?
WeknowthatXandV1togethercauseV2,V2causesV3,V3causesV4,
Conditional V4causesV5,V5causesY.WeobservedV1.WouldYoccurifnotX
----------- --------------------------------------------------- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
insteadofX?
X
WeknowthatV1causesX,XandV1togethercauseV2,V2causesV3,
Backdoor V2 V3 V4 V5 Y
-------- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ----- -------
V3andXtogethercauseV4,V4causesV5,andV5causesY.
V1
Table1: IllustrativeCounterfactualQueryTypes
--- --- --- ------- ------------------------------------ --- --- --- --- ---
2.1 DatasetStructure BasicCounterfactual. Thebasiccounterfactual
typeaddressessimple“what-if”scenarios. Inthis
--- --- --- --- --- -------------------------------------- --- --- ----------------- ------
scenario,itisformalizedasY (u),whichservesas
x
The dataset consists of two main components: a apotentialoutcomeexpression. Incausalreason-
ing, potential outcomes refer to the hypothetical
------ -------------- ------- --- ------------- -------------- -------- ----- ------ ------------
set of counterfactual queries and corresponding
binary answers. Formally, the dataset is defined resultsobservedwhenavariableissettoapartic-
as D := {(q ,a ) i = 1,2,...,N}, where each ular value (Holland, 1986). In Y (u) expression,
i i x
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---------- --- ---
Y variable,x
q is a counterfactual query, and a ∈ {yes,no} is the outcome is the value consid-
i i
---------- ----------- ------- ---- ------------ ------- ---------------- --- --------- -------------
ered in the hypothetical scenario, and u denotes
represents the correct answer. Each query is de-
rivedfromadeterministicStructuralCausalModel the context. To illustrate, consider a lawn irriga-
(SCM)M = ⟨U,V,f⟩,whereU isthesetofexoge- tionsystemthatonlyactivateswhentheweatheris
sunny and the soil is dry. In this example, Y (u)
------------------------------- --- --- --- ---------- --------- -------- ------- ---------------- -----
nousvariableswithassignmentsu,V isthesetof x
endogenousvariables,andf isthesetofstructural describesthesystem’spotentialbehaviorwhenthe
equations(Pearl,2009). ForeachV ∈ V,wehave weatherconditionxisimposedwhilethesoilcondi-
i
tion(contextu)remainsunchanged. Consequently,
--- ----------- ----------- --- ------------- ------------------------------- --- --- --- -------------
V = f (Pa(V ),U ),wherePa(V ) ⊆ V denotes
i i i i i
whenaskingwhetherthesystemwouldactivateif
the parents of V i , and U i refers to the subset of
----------- -------- -------------- --- ------------- --- --- --- --- ---
exogenousvariablesfromU thatdirectlyinfluence theweatherchangedtocloudy,therelevantcoun-
the value of V . Intervening on a set of variables terfactualoutcomeisY cloudy (u).
i
X ⊆ V andsettingthemtoxmodifiesthemodelto
M ,whichdeterministicallydefinesthevaluesof JointCounterfactual. Thistypeinvolvesacoun-
x
intervenedvariablesgivenu. Thedatasetincludes terfactualscenarioinwhichmultiplevariablesare
fivetypesofcounterfactualqueries: set simultaneously. Formally, it is expressed as
Standard CausalCoT
Models Basic Cond. Joint NestedBack. Avg. Basic Cond. Joint NestedBack. Avg.
GPT-3(Davinci-002) 56.8 50.2 48.8 51.6 52.5 51.9 51.2 41.9 51.2 51.6 50.5 49.3
GPT-3(Babbage-002) 50.0† 50.0† 50.0† 50.0† 47.5 49.6 3.6* 7.6* 1.2* 19.6* 18.5* 9.8*
GPT-3.5 49.6 51.2 50.4 50.0 52.0 50.6 43.6 50.4 53.6 50.0 47.5 49.1
GPT-4omini 50.0† 50.0† 50.0† 50.0† 52.5 50.4 57.2 66.4 60.0 63.2 50.0 59.8
GPT-4o 50.4 54.4 50.4 54.8 54.0 52.8 80.4 72.4 80.8 81.6 60.5 75.8
Claude-3(Sonnet) 50.4 48.8 50.0 50.8 59.5 51.6 59.2 52.0 64.4 60.0 65.5 59.0
Claude-3.5(Haiku) 28.4 24.0 43.6 54.0 51.0 39.8 60.4 65.6 67.2 66.0 61.0 64.2
Gemini-1.5-flash 75.2 65.6 67.2 76.0 53.0 68.0 72.4 70.8 72.4 78.4 58.5 71.0
Gemini-1.5-flash-8b 50.0† 50.0† 50.0† 50.0† 52.5 50.4 66.8 67.2 65.2 65.2 58.5 64.8
Deepseek-V3 50.4 50.4 50.0 50.0 60.5 51.9 80.8 70.4 76.4 77.6 63.5 74.2
Table2: ModelaccuracyofstandardmethodandCausalCoTacrossdifferentreasoningcategories. Note: *The
averageaccuracyisonly9.8%becausemostofresponsesarenot“Yes”or“No”but“incomprehensible”,which
meansLLMcannotfollowinstructionofCausalCoTinstructionwelltoinfer. Moredetailswillbeexplainedinthe
AppendixH.†indicatesthattheLLMpredictsallquestionsaseither“Yes”or“No”,leadingtoa50%accuracy.
Y x,z (u),representingtheoutcomeY aftersetting observedassunny,thequeryevaluateswhetherthe
X = xandZ = z. Forinstance,alawnirrigation lawn irrigation system still activate or not if the
systemwillactivateiftheweatherissunny,butit sensordetectsmoistsoilinsteadofdryness. Here,
alsorequiresdrysoilasatrigger. SupposeZ repre- Z = z representstheweatherisobservedassunny,
sentstheweatherconditionandX representsthe whichisagivenconditionforreasoning.
soilmoisturecondition. Thequeryasksiftheirriga-
---------------------- --- ------------------------ --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
tionsystemwillactivatewhentheweatherchanges
to cloudy and the sensor detects that the soil is
--------------- ----------------------------- ------- ---------------- --- --- --- --- --- ---
moistmeanwhile. Therelevantcounterfactualout-
comeisY (u). Thisscenarioexamines Backdoor Counterfactual. This type involves
cloudy,moist
thecombinedeffectofbothactionshappeningsi- counterfactual reasoning in the presence of back-
door paths that create confounding between the
--- --- --- --- ---------- ----------- ----------- --- ------- ---
multaneously.
treatmentvariableandtheoutcome(Pearl,2009).
NestedCounterfactual. Nestedcounterfactual Formally, it addresses queries of the form Y x (u)
when there exist backdoor paths from X to Y
------------------- ------------ --- ------------- ---------- ----- -------- ----- ------ ----
involves sequential dependencies between vari-
ables. This is represented as Y (u), where an throughconfounders. Insuchscenarios,thecausal
Zx
interventiononX affectsZ,whichinturnimpacts effect cannot be directly identified without con-
trolling for the confounding variables along the
--------------- ------ ------- ---------------- -------- ------------------- --- --------- ----- ---
Y. For example, if the weather had been cloudy,
whichisacounterfactualweatherstate,andunder backdoor paths. For example, a manager consid-
thisscenario,thesensordetectedmoistsoilinstead ersevaluatingwhetheranewmarketingcampaign
of dry soil, would the irrigation system activate? would increase sales if it is implemented. How-
Inthisframework,Z representstheweathercondi- ever,boththedecisiontolaunchthecampaignand
tion,X isthesoilmoisturereading. Z dependson thesalesoutcomemightbeinfluencedbyseasonal
thecounterfactualvalueofX throughthesystem’s demand patterns. Here, the backdoor path runs
from the marketing campaign through seasonal
--- --- --- --- -------- --------- -------- ------- -------- ---
structuralcausalrelationships.
demand to sales, creating a spurious association.
--- --- --- --- ------ --------- -------- ---------- ------------ ---
Conditional Counterfactual. This type intro- The counterfactual query “Would sales increase
ducesobservedconditionsintothecounterfactual if we launched the campaign?” requires account-
world (Pearl, 2009). Formally, it is written as ingforthisconfoundingbyeithercontrollingfor
Y (u) Z (u) = z, askinghowY wouldchange seasonaleffectsorusingotheridentificationstrate-
x x
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
ifX wassettoxwhileZ = z beingobservedas gies. Inourdataset,backdoorcounterfactualstest
a condition. For example, a lawn irrigation sys- whether LLMs can distinguish between genuine
temwillactivateiftheweatherissunny,butitalso causaleffectsandspuriouscorrelationswhenrea-
requiresdrysoilasatrigger. Nowtheweatheris soningaboutalternativescenarios.

2.2 QueryGenerationandQuality 2022). Byintegratingasystematicderivationpro-

Assessment cess,includingcausalgraphextraction,querytype
classification, data collection, and formalization,
Each query consists of background information
CausalCoTensuresrobustlogicalconsistencyand
and a specific question. Table 1 illustrates how
-------------- --------- --- ----- ------------- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
highreasoningaccuracy.
samplesaregeneratedusingvariousdeterministic
EvaluationSettings. Withinourevaluationframe-
------------------------- ----------- ------ ------------------- ---------------- --- ------------------- --- -------------- ------------------------- ---- ----- --------
counterfactualquerytypes. Thebackgroundiscon-
work, responses are classified into three distinct
structed with causal graphs and story templates,
categories,“Yes”,“No”,and“Incomprehensible”.
andvariablenamesarereplacedbynonsensical,ar-
Thelatterencompassingresponsesthatareeither
tificiallygeneratedwords(e.g.,“Kelp,”“Ziklo”)to
ambiguousorlackclearmeaning,typicallymani-
preventmodelsfromrelyingonmemorizedknowl-
festingwhennoanswerisdetected,suchasNULL
edge. In this way, we force LLMs to engage in
-------- --------- --- ---------- --------- --- ------- ------- ----- ------- ------ ---------- ---
returns or mere query echoes. During inference,
causalreasoningratherthanusingpriorknowledge
wesetthetemperatureat0. Weemployinference
-------------- ----- --- ------- ------------- ---- ----------------------- --- --- --- ----------------- --- ---
in pretraining data. The dataset also features bal-
accuracyasourprimaryperformancemetric.
anced distributions in multiple dimensions, with
------------------- --- ----------- --- ----------- ---- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
binaryresponsesevenlysplitbetween50%“Yes” 3.1 ExperimentalResults
and50%“No.”Thisbalanceextendsacrossdiffer-
AsshowninTable2,theresultsindicatethatwith-
entquestiontypesanddifficultylevels,ensuringa
outspecificinstructions,mostLLMsstrugglewith
uniformresponsedistributionwithineachcategory.
counterfactualreasoning,performingnobetterthan
Thedatasetconsistsof1,200questions,categorized
randomguessingintermsofaccuracy. Specifically,
--- --- --- --- --- --- -------------------------------- --- --- --- --- ------------- ---
intofivedistincttypes,witheachtypecontaining
for model GPT-4o mini, we observed consistent
------------------ --- ------------------------ --- --- --- ----------- ------ ------ ----- -------- ---------- ---
200or250questions. Withineachtype,thereisan
predictions of either “Yes” or “No,” resulting in
equaldistributionofanswers,comprising100“Yes”
a 50.0% accuracy in the first four kinds of ques-
--------- ------- ------------- --------- ------- ---------- -------------------------------------------- -------- --- --------- ---- ----- --------
responses and 100 “No” responses or 125 “Yes”
tions. Amongalltestedmodels,Gemini-1.5-flash
and 125 “No”. Additionally, the dataset is strati-
achievedthehighestbaselineperformancewithan
fied based on five levels of difficulty, determined
---------- ------- ------ -------------- ---------- --- -------- --------- -------- --- --- --------- ---
accuracy of 68.0%. Although the CausalCoT ap-
bythenumberofeventspresentineachquestion,
proachisdesignedtoenhancethecausalreasoning
rangingfrom5to9. Eachdifficultylevelincludes
---------------- --- --------------------------- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
capabilitiesofLLMs,ourempiricalfindingssug-
240questions,maintainingabalanceddistribution
gestthatitdoesnotsignificantlyimprovetheirper-
ofanswerswith120“Yes”and120“No”. Wealso
-------------------------------- --- --- --- --- ------ --------------------------------------- --- --- --- --- --- ----
formanceincounterfactualreasoningtasks. Most
conductahumanevaluationonthesequeries,with
modelsshowedminimalornoimprovement,asex-
furtherdetailsprovidedinAppendixB.
emplifiedbyGPT-3.5Turbo. Thebestperformance
--- --- --- --- --- --- ------------------------ ------------- --- --- ------------------ -------- ---
model in the CausalCoT is GPT-4o, achieved an
3 BenchmarkingLLMsonCounterBench
accuracyofonly75.8%.
Weconductedcomprehensiveexperimentstosys- ErrorAnalysis. Tosystematicallyanalyzethelim-
tematically evaluate the performance of current itations of existing approaches, we conducted an
LLMs on counterfactual reasoning tasks, demon- error analysis on responses generated by Causal-
stratingtheircapabilitiesusingstate-of-the-artrea- CoT. Our analysis focuses on three key compo-
soningtechniques.
nents: causal data collection, inference process,
--- --- --- --- --- --- ------------- --- ---------------- --- --------- --- --------
Models. The tested LLM models include GPT- and conclusion derivation. Through careful ex-
3.5 turbo, GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini, Davinci-002, aminationofeachcomponent,weidentifiedthree
Babbage-002(OpenAI,2024),Claude3.5Haiku, primarycategoriesoferrors: Wrongcausalrela-
Claude 3 Sonnet (Anthropic, 2024), Deepseek- tionships: This error occurs when LLMs cannot
V3 (DeepSeek, 2024) and Gemini-1.5-Flash and constructaccuratecausalgraphsorextractknown
Gemini-1.5-Flash-8B(Google,2024). valuesfrombackgroundinformation. Wronginfer-
ReasoningStrategies. Inourbaselineevaluations, enceprocess: ThishappenswhenLLMs,despite
we employed two distinct reasoning strategies to correctlyidentifyingcausalrelationships,makein-
assess these models. The first relied on standard correctpredictionsofthetargeteventY. Wrong
prompting methods without specialized instruc- conclusion: ThistypeoferrorariseswhenLLMs
tions. The second used the advanced CausalCoT reach contradictory final answers, even after cor-
approach (Jin et al., 2023), an extension of the rectlycomputingthevalueofY. Thedistribution
Chain-of-Thoughtpromptingparadigm(Weietal., of these error categories is illustrated in Figure
  1. Notably, 86% of errors occur in the inference Each phase serves a specific purpose in ensuring process,revealingthatevenwithwell-constructed accurate counterfactual reasoning, and they pro- causal graphs, LLMs struggle significantly with vide a robust methodology for handling complex derivingaccuratepredictionsthroughreasoning. causaldependenciestogether. Below,wedescribe eachphaseindetail,explainingitsroleandhowit contributestotheoverallprocess. 4.1 Extraction Inthefirstphase,wefocusonsystematicallygath- 12%
    2% ering all relevant information explicitly stated in
    the scenario. The process begins with construct-
    ing the causal graph by identifying relationships
    between events and representing them in a clear
    “event 1 → event 2” format, which eliminates
    86% potential ambiguities. Next, we collect the given
    valuesforeachvariablefrombothbackgroundin-
    Wrong Inference
    Wrong Relations formationandquestions,wherethesevaluesindi-
    --- --------------- --- ------------------------------------------- --- --- --- --- ---
    Wrong Conclusion
    catewhetherspecificeventsoccurornot. Crucially,
    --- --- --- ------------------------------------ --- --- --- ---------- ---
    thisphasemaintainsstrictadherencetoexplicitly
    Figure3: ErrorAnalysisofCausalCoT. stated information, avoiding any unsupported in-
    ferencesorassumptionsinfavorofarigorousand
    unbiaseddatacollectionprocess.
    4 ProposedReasoningStrategy
    4.2 Abduction
    Asdiscussedinprevioussection,theprimarychal-
    lenge for large language models is to minimize Thisphasefocusesoninferringtheposteriorcon-
    incorrectinferences,whichareamajorsourceof straintsovertheexogenousnoisevariables,equiv-
    errors. Toaddressthischallenge,weproposeCoIn alently, constraints over parent assignments that
    (Counterfactual Inference), a systematic reason- make the observed factual world consistent with
    ingframeworkthatguideslargelanguagemodels thestructuralequations. Foreachobservedvariable
    throughstructuredproblem-solvinginsteadofre- V with value v , we invert its structural equa-
    obs
    lyingonintuitiveshortcutsormemorizedpatterns. tionV := f (Parents(V),U )toobtaineithera
    V V
    --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
    Our approach transforms counterfactual queries unique solution for U V or a feasible set over U V
    into a five-phase algorithmic process, mirroring giventheparents. Indeterministiclogicalmodels,
    how humans naturally approach “what if” ques- thisisoftenconvenientlycarriedoutbydeducing
    tions (Sel et al., 2023): first understanding what parent assignments that must hold for v to be
    obs
    actuallyhappened,thenimaginingthealternative true. Theresultingvaluesarestoredasthefactual
    scenario,systematicallyworkingthroughthecon- world knowledge base and will be held fixed in
    sequences, andfinallydouble-checkingthelogic. subsequentInterventionActionandForwardInfer-
    Thisstructuredapproachsignificantlyreducesrea- ence,ensuringcounterfactualsareevaluatedinthe
    soningerrorsbybreakingdowncomplexproblems sameworld.
    ------------------------------------------ --- --- ---------- --- --- --- --- ---
    intomanageablestepswithbuilt-invalidation. An
    4.3 InterventionAction
    exampleofproposedparadigmisprovidedinAp-
    pendixA. In this phase, the framework applies the counter-
    -------- --- --- -------------- ------------- --- ------- ------------ ---
    TheCoInframeworkconsistsoffivekeyphases: factualinterventionsdescribedinthequery. This
    Extraction: ExtractCounterfactualInformation involvesmodifyingtheoriginalsetofcausalrules
    from the given natural language facts. Abduc- byreplacingtheequationsfortheintervenedvari-
    tion: Infer the underlying conditions from ob- ableswithconstantvalues,resultinginanupdated
    servedfacts;InterventionAction: Applythehy- setofrules. Theinterventionsareincorporatedinto
    potheticalchangesspecifiedinthequery;Forward theknowledgebase,effectivelymakingaprecise
    Inference: Systematicallytracethroughthecausal alterationtothecausalgraph. Thisphasecaptures
    consequences;Back-trackingValidation: Verify thecore“whatif”elementofthequery,allowing
    thelogicalconsistencyoftheentirereasoningchain. theframeworktosimulatehypotheticalworldsin

a controlled way. It focuses on specific changes, Model Standard CausalCoTSolver Ours whichstreamlinestheexplorationbylimitingthe

GPT-3(Davinci-002) 51.9 49.3 50.1 49.6
search to paths directly affected by the interven- GPT-3 (Babbage- 49.6 9.8 47.9 45.8
002)
tion, similar to how efficient searches eliminate
------------- --- ------ --------- --- -------- --------- ---------- --- --- ---- ---- ---- ----
GPT-4omini 50.4 59.8 47.2 79.9
unnecessarybranches.
GPT-4o 52.8 75.8 51.4 89.4
-------------------- --- --- --- --- --- --- ----------------- --- --- ---- ---- ---- ----
GPT-3.5turbo 50.6 49.1 49.6 58.9
4.4 ForwardInference Claude-3(Sonnet) 51.6 59.0 51.8 89.8
Claude-3.5(Haiku) 39.8 64.2 48.3 79.1
Duringthisiterativephase,theframeworkpredicts Gemini-1.5-flash 68.0 71.0 52.8 89.9
Gemini-1.5-flash-8b 50.4 64.8 50.3 83.9
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ------------------- --- --- ---- ---- ---- ----
valuesforunobservedvariablesbyselectingnodes
Deepseek-V3 51.9 74.2 49.3 91.8
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ----------- --- --- ---- ---- ---- ----
inthecausalgraphwhoseparentvariablesareal-
ready known in the knowledge base and evaluat- Table3: ModelaccuracyonCounterBench. Wereport
ing their updated equations. Beginning with the theaverageaccuracyforfourinferencestrategies: Stan-
intervenedvariablesandtheinferrednoiseterms, dard,CausalCoT,Solver,andCoIn.
it gradually computes the effects on downstream
------------------------------------------ -------- --- --- ------- --- ---------- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
variablesuntilitreachesthetargetvariableY. Ifa
approachcombinesLLMswithStructuralCausal
node’svaluecannotbecalculatedduetomissingin-
Model(SCM)tools(Pearl,2009)forcausalinfer-
formationaboutitsparents,theframeworkchooses
ence. ThestudyintroducesCausalTool,asuiteof
another suitable node and continues the process
------- -------- ---- --- --------- --- ----------- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
10inferencetoolsdesignedforvariouscausaltasks.
until Y is determined. This forward progression
------- -------------- --- ---- ------- --- ----------- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
ItleveragesLLMstoclassifycausalquestions,ex-
mimicsadepth-firstexplorationofcausalchains,
tractcausalgraphsandformalizeddata,androute
enablingtheframeworktodynamicallyconstruct
them to the appropriate tools for inference, with
---------- --------- ----------- --------- ------------ --- ----------- --------------------------------- --------------- --- ----- --- ---------- ------
and assess potential outcomes. By focusing on
thefinalanswergeneratedbytheLLM.1 During
nodes that can be computed immediately, it nav-
inference,thetemperatureissettozero.
igates the dependency graph efficiently, steering
---------- ------------ --- ----- ------------ --------- -------- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
clear of unproductive paths and promoting a me-
5.2 MainResult
thodical advancement toward the solution. The
-------- ----------- --- ------ --- ------------- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
detailsofthisphaseisintheAppendixG. The comprehensive performance comparison
across all models is presented in Table 3. Our
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---------- ------ --- --------- --- ----- ------
4.5 Back-trackingValidation approachdemonstratesnotableimprovementsover
existing methods across the model spectrum,
---------- --- -------- --------- --- ------ --------- -------- ------- ------ --- --------- --------- ---
To confirm that the predicted values are logi-
callyconsistent,thisfinalphaseretracesthesteps with particularly noteworthy performance gains
achieved by smaller language models, including
------- ------------- --- ---- --- ------------ --- -------- ---------- --- -------- ------- --------- ---
through the knowledge base and re-evaluates the
GPT-4omini,Claude-3.5Haiku,andGemini-1.5-
equationforeachnon-noisevariableusingthepre-
flash-8b. Forinstance,ourmethodenablesGPT-4o
------------- --- -------------------------------- --- --- --- --- --------- ---------------------------------- --- --- --- --- ---
dictedvalues. ForeverysuchvariableV,itrecalcu-
minitoachieveanaccuracyof79.9%,surpassing
latestheexpectedvaluebasedontheupdatedequa-
theperformanceofseverallargermodelswithout
tionandchecksifitmatchesthepreviouslystored
CoInenhancement. AsdetailedinTable4,taking
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---------------- --- ------------------------- --- --- --- ---
value. Ifanymismatchoccurs,theframeworksig-
nalsanerror,highlightingapotentialissueinthe GPT-4ominiasanexample,CoInachievessuperior
performanceacrossallfivetypesofcounterfactual
earlierreasoningthatmayneedreevaluation. This
---------------------------------------- ------ --- ------------ --- ------- ------- ---------- ---- ------------ --- ------ ------- ------
questions, with particularly better results on ba-
validation serves as a protective measure against
sicquestionscomparedtomorecomplexvariants.
errors that could accumulate during the process,
----------- ----- ---------- --- ------ --- ------------ ------------- ------------------------------ --- --- --- --- ---
Additionally, state-of-the-artLLMssuchasGPT-
akintoretracingapathtoconfirmitsvalidity.
4o,Gemini-1.5-flash,andDeepseek-V3achievere-
5 Experiments markableaccuracyapproachingorexceeding90%
------------- --- --- --- --- --- --- ----------------------------------------- --- --- --- --- ----------- ---
whenaugmentedwithourmethod. TakenGPT-4o
5.1 ExperimentSetup as example, Our strategy improves the accuracy
WeadoptedthesameLLMsasmentionedinSec- ofthemodelfrom75.8%to89.4%,demonstrating
tion3forourexperiments. Toestablishbaselines, CoIn’seffectivenessinguidingLLMsthroughal-
gorithmtoexplorepathsstep-by-step. Theresults
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---------------------------------- --- --- --- --- ---------- ---
weimplementedbothCausalCoT(Jinetal.,2023)
andstandardsolverstrategies. Thelatterintegrates
---------------------------- --- --- --- ------------------- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
1SincethesourcecodeforCausalToolisnotpubliclyavail-
externaltoolsintothechain-of-thoughtprocess,as
able,were-implementeditscounterfactualinferenceproce-
described in (Hua et al., 2024). Specifically, this durebasedondescriptionsintheoriginalpaper.

Methods Basic Cond. Joint Nested Back. Avg. terfactualreasoningtasks. Standard 50.0 50.0 50.0 50.0 52.5 50.4 90 CausalCoT 57.2 66.4 60.0 63.2 50.0 59.8 Solver 35.2 54.4 50.4 50.0 45.5 47.2 80 Ours 82.8 79.2 80.0 80.4 76.5 79.9 70 60 Table 4: Accuracy of GPT-4o mini across five query 50 typesintheCounterBench. 40 30 indicatethatcontemporaryLLMs,whenequipped 20 withourstrategy,caneffectivelyresolvemostfor- 10 malcomplexcounterfactualproblems. Thedetails 0 gemini-1.5 gemini-1.5 gemini-1.5-8bgemini-1.5-8b ofallperformanceofourresultsarepresentedin anti- common- anti- common- commonsense sense commonsense sense Appendix C. Moreover, in Appendix D, we con- ductederroranalysis. Theanalysisrevealsasub- stantial reduction in errors of inference process. Moreover,wealsoexaminetheimpactofcomplex causal relationships on outcomes. We found that accuracy decreases as the number of variants in- creasesforCausalCoTandCoIn. Thedetailsare showninthenextsection. 5.3 ValidatingGeneralizationAbility Inthissection, weevaluatethegeneralizationca- pabilityofCoInusingtheCLADDERdataset(Jin etal.,2023). CLADDERisadatasetfocusonthe causalreasoningquestions. WeutilizetheCLAD- DERdatasettodetermineiftheproposedmethod canbeextendedbeyondtheCounterBenchdataset. Unlikeourdataset,whichfocusesonformalrules, CLADDER includes examples that utilize com- monsenseknowledgeratherthancausalinference abilitiestoanswerqueries. Specifically,itencom- passesbothcommonsenseandanti-commonsense scenarios, allowing us to explore whether CoIn remains effective under the influence of pretrain- ingknowledgeinLLMs. Weconductexperiments on the counterfactual subset of CLADDER. We applied the Gemini-1.5 and Gemini-1.5-8b mod- elstobothcommonsenseandanti-commonsense queries,withtheresultsdisplayedinFigure4and detailed examples in Appendix E. These results demonstratethatperformanceisconsistentlystable across different reasoning paradigms, suggesting that pretraining knowledge has a limited impact ontheCoIncounterfactualreasoningcapabilities. Furthermore,ourmethodachievesanaccuracyof 78.98%,outperformingbothCausalCoTat64.77% andtheStandardmethodat64.20%. Thisperfor- manceunderscoresCoIn’sgeneralizabilityandits potential for broader application in various coun- )%( ycaruccA Standard CausalCoT Ours Figure 4: Accuracy comparison between Standard, CoIn, and CausalCoT method in Anti-commonsense andCommonsenseDataset. 6 RelatedWork CounterfactualReasoning. Counterfactualrea- soning explores how outcomes change when cer- tainvariablesarealteredfromtheirhistoricalstates. InStructuralCausalModels(SCMs),Pearl’s(Pearl, 2009) “surgery” and do-calculus provide system- aticwaystoinferinterventionoutcomes,highlight- ing deep causal knowledge required for accurate inference. Counterfactuals can be deterministic or probabilistic: deterministic settings yield pre- dictable outcomes from given conditions, while probabilistic models incorporate inherent uncer- tainties. These methods have gained traction in domains like social sciences, where they assess alternativepolicyoutcomesandstudycausalmech- anismsinobservationaldata(Morgan,2015),and inmedicine,wheretheyenablepersonalizedtreat- mentanddecisionsupport(Johanssonetal.,2016; Shalitetal.,2017;Louizosetal.,2017;Yoonetal., 2018). Inartificialintelligence,counterfactualrea- soning is crucial for interpretability and fairness, enablingmodelstogeneratealternativescenarios andassessdecision-makingrobustness. Although recent efforts extend counterfactual reasoning to LLMs(Jinetal.,2023),significantchallengesper- sist,particularlyregardingcomplexvariablerela- tionships in high-dimensional text data. Conse- quently,bridgingthegapbetweentextualcomplex- ityandrobustcausalinferenceremainsafocalpoint forfutureresearch. LLMs in Counterfactual Learning. With the rapidevolutionofLLMs,theresearchcommunity

hasincreasinglyfocusedontheirabilitytoperform Sébastien Bubeck, Varun Chandrasekaran, Ronen El- causalinference(Zhangetal.,2023;Ashwanietal., dan, Johannes Gehrke, Eric Horvitz, Ece Kamar,

Peter Lee, Yin Tat Lee, Yuanzhi Li, Scott Lund-
2024). AprominentexampleisCausalAgent,an
berg,etal.2023. Sparksofartificialgeneralintelli-
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --------------- --- --------------------------------- --- --- ---
agent-basedLLMframeworkthatmergesanLLM
gence: Earlyexperimentswithgpt-4. arXivpreprint
----------- ----- --- ------- ----- ---- ------- --------------------------------- --- --- --- ------------- ---
with causal tools for complex tasks (Han et al.,
arXiv:2303.12712.
2024). While it excels at identifying causal asso-
------ -------- ------ -------------- --- ------ ----- --- --- --- --- --- ---
IviChatzi,NinaCorveloBenz,EleniStraitouri,Stratis
ciations and conducting interventions, it largely
-------- -------------- --- -------------- --- --- ---------- --------------------------------------- --- --- --- --- -----
Tsirtsis,andManuelGomez-Rodriguez.2024. Coun-
omitscounterfactualreasoning,limitingitsapplica- terfactualtokengenerationinlargelanguagemodels.
bilitytomoreadvancedscenarios. Currentefforts arXivpreprintarXiv:2409.17027.
to integrate counterfactual reasoning into LLMs
------------ -------------- --- --- --------- ---- ---- --- --- --- --- --- ---
HuigangChen,TotteHarinen,Jeong-YoonLee,Mike
typically follow two paths. First, commonsense-
--------- ------ --- ------ ------ ------------ --- --------- ------ ----- --------------- --- ------
Yung, and Zhenyu Zhao. 2020. Causalml: Python
basedapproachesleveragebackgroundknowledge
packageforcausalmachinelearning. arXivpreprint
----------- ---------- ------- --------- ----------- ------- -------- -------------------------------- ----------- --- ------------------- ------------- ---
to imagine scenarios that defy established facts arXiv:2002.11631.
(Ning et al., 2024; Chatzi et al., 2024; Musi and
DeepSeek.2024. DeepSeek: AI-PoweredSearchEn-
Palmieri, 2024; Vicuna, 2023), such as positing
gine. Accessed: 2025-02-15.
alternative historical outcomes. Second, graph-
based methods employ formal causal graphs and AmirFeder,KatherineAKeith,EmaadManzoor,Reid
Pryzant,DhanyaSridhar,ZachWood-Doughty,Jacob
externalPythonpackagesforcomputations,asseen
Eisenstein,JustinGrimmer,RoiReichart,MargaretE
inCausalTool(Huaetal.,2024). Althoughthese
---------------------------- --- --- --- --- ------------- --- ------------------ --- ---------------------------- --- --- ---
Roberts,etal.2022. Causalinferenceinnaturallan-
methodseffectivelyincorporatestructuredcausal
guageprocessing: Estimation,prediction,interpreta-
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---------------- --- --------------------------------- --- --- ---
information, they often offload key calculations tionandbeyond. TransactionsoftheAssociationfor
ComputationalLinguistics,10:1138–1158.
outsidetheLLM.
Google. 2024. Gemini. https://gemini.google.
------------ --- --- --- --- --- --- --------------- ----------- --- ---------------------- --- ---
7 Conclusion com/. Accessed: 2025-01-06.
Inthiswork,wedevelopandextendCounterBench, IanDGow,DavidFLarcker,andPeterCReiss.2016.
acounterfactualreasoningdatasetwithfiveprob- Causalinferenceinaccountingresearch. Journalof
AccountingResearch,54(2):477–523.
lem types for LLM evaluation. Our findings re-
--------- ------- ----------- --- --- ------------ --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
vealthatmostLLMsperformnear-randomly,with Emilia Gvozdenovic´, Lucio Malvisi, Elisa Cinconze,
StijnVansteelandt,PhoebeNakanwagi,Emmanuel
state-of-the-artmethodsshowingminimalimprove-
ment. To address these challenges, we propose Aris,andDominiqueRosillon.2021. Causalinfer-
enceconceptsappliedtothreeobservationalstudies
CoIn, a reasoning paradigm inspired by formal
------- --------- -------- --- -------- --- ------ --------------------------------- --- --- --- ---------- ---
inthecontextofvaccinedevelopment: fromtheory
causalinferenceprinciplesandplanningstrategies. to practice. BMC Medical Research Methodology,
CoInguidesLLMsthroughiterativethinkingand 21:1–10.
----------------------------------------- --- --- --- --- --- --- -------- --- --- --- --- ---
backtrackingtoexplorereasoningpathsmoreeffec-
KairongHan,KunKuang,ZiyuZhao,JunjianYe,and
tively. Ourapproachsignificantlyenhancescoun-
FeiWu.2024. Causalagentbasedonlargelanguage
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ----------- ------------------------------- --- --- --- ---
terfactualreasoningcapabilitiesofLLMs. model. arXivpreprintarXiv:2408.06849.
Paul W Holland. 1986. Statistics and causal infer-
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --------------- ----- ---------- --- ---------- ------
ence. JournaloftheAmericanstatisticalAssociation,
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arXiv:2304.05524.
C.MoreExperimentDetails
Appendix
Table 5 presents a comprehensive performance
--- --- --- --- --- ------- -------- --- ------------- --- ----------- ---
A.MethodPromptDesign
comparison between the Solver method and our
--- --- --- --- --- ---------- ------- --- ---------- --- ------ -------
Ourpromptdesign,asillustratedinFigure5,has CoInapproachacrossvariousmodelsontheCoun-
terBenchdataset. Ouranalysisrevealsseveralsig-
--- --- --- --- --- ---------------- --- ----------------------------- --- --- --- ---
beencarefullystructuredtooptimizetheinteraction
betweenouralgorithmandLargeLanguageMod- nificantpatternsinmodelperformanceacrossdif-
els (LLMs). At its core, the design incorporates ferent counterfactual reasoning tasks. First and
multiplefew-shotexamplesthatserveascompre- foremost,CoIndemonstratesconsistentsuperiority
hensive demonstrations of our algorithm’s opera- over the Solver method across all task categories
tionalframework. Theseexamplesarestrategically andmodelarchitectures. Thisimprovementispar-
selected to showcase various reasoning patterns ticularlypronouncedinnewermodelarchitectures,
withstate-of-the-artmodelslikeGPT-4o,Claude-3
andproblem-solvingapproaches,providingLLMs
witharobustfoundationforunderstandingthealgo- (Sonnet), and Gemini-1.5-flash showing remark-
rithm’smethodology. Withintheprompt,wehave ableperformancegains. Notably,GPT-4oachieves
perfectaccuracy(100.0%)onbasicreasoningtasks
meticulouslydetailedstep-by-stepinstructions,cre-
atingaclearandstructuredinformationflowthat underourmethod. Deepseek-V3demonstratesex-
guides the model through the reasoning process. ceptionalconsistencywithhighperformanceacross
ThisstructuredapproachleveragesLLMs’inherent all task types. Its accuracy comes to 99.6% for
basic tasks and maintaining above 90% average
--- --- --- --- --- ----------- --- ----------- --- ----- --- -------
in-contextlearningcapabilities,enablingthemto
systematically explore solution paths rather than accuracy. Theperformancedistributionacrossdif-
relyingonintuitiveresponses. Thisapproachnot ferenttasktypesrevealsinterestingpatterns. Basic
reasoning tasks consistently yield the highest ac-
------------- ----------- ------- -------- ---- --------- ----- ------------ --- ----- --- -----------
only enhances the model’s ability to break down
problems and evaluate paths efficiently but also curacy under our method, particularly evident in
reducingthelikelihoodofgeneratingerroneousin- largermodels. However,thiscategoryalsoexhibits
termediatestepsandimprovingreasoningstability. themostsignificantperformancevariationacross
different model architectures, suggesting that ba-
--- --- --- --- --- --------- ----- -------------- --- ---------- --- --------
siccounterfactualreasoningcapabilitiesarehighly
B.HumanEvaluation
sensitive to model scale and architecture. In con-
--- --- --- --- --- --------- -------- ----- --- ------------- --- -------
Toassessthequalityofourdataset,weaskedtwo trast, joint reasoning tasks show relatively stable
Ph.D. students with expertise in causal inference performance across different models, indicating
toanswer200randomlyselectedquestions. They thatthesecapabilitiesmaybemorefundamentally
achieved an average accuracy of 97.75% and re- tiedtothereasoningframeworkratherthanmodel
quiredfourhourstocompletethem,reflectingthe size. Moreover,weobserveaclearcorrelationbe-
substantial cognitive effort involved. According tweenmodelrecencyandperformance,withnewer
toparticipantfeedback,thesequestionsdemanded modelslikeGPT-4oandClaude-3(Sonnet)achiev-
carefulconsiderationofmultiplecausalfactorsand ingsignificantlyhigheraverageaccuracies(89.8%,
explicitcounterfactualreasoningsteps. Thesefind- 89.4%)comparedtotheirpredecessors. Thistrend
ings demonstrate that our dataset presents prob- holdstrueacrossalltasktypes,thoughthemagni-

tudeofimprovementvariesbycategory. Thecon- in Figure 12, the approach breaks down the rea- sistent performance improvements across newer soningprocessintodistinctphases: counterfactual modelarchitecturessuggestthatrecentadvancesin informationcollection,andsystematicexploration languagemodeldevelopmenthaveenhancedtheir ofinferencepaths. Thisstructureddecomposition capacity for structured counterfactual reasoning contrastssharplywiththestandardapproachshown whencombinedwithourmethodology. inFigure9,whichprovidesminimalguidancefor

navigatingthereasoningprocess. Throughexplicit
D.ErrorAnalysiscomparisonbetweenOur
variablemappingandsystematicpathexploration,
MethodandCausalCoT
CoIn enables models to systematically evaluate
--- --- --- --- --- --- ------------ ------------------------ --------
By randomly sampling 50 instances and catego- possible causal chains, leading to more reliable
rizingerrorsintothreedistincttypes, wrongrela- andtraceableinferenceoutcomes. Thekeyreason
tions, wrong inferences, and wrong conclusions, why only CoIn arrived at the correct answer lies
we systematically evaluated the model’s perfor- initsexplicitstructuredreasoningprocess,which
mance. Theanalysisdemonstratednotablediffer- ensuresasystematicandrobustapproachtocoun-
ences in the relative distribution of errors, with terfactual inference. Unlike CausalCoT and the
inference-related errors decreasing from 86% to standardmethod,CoInemploysastep-by-stepal-
46%. This significant reduction combining with gorithmicframeworkthatsystematicallyprocesses
thediminishederrorquantitysubstantiatesanen- causaldependencies,preventingshortcutreasoning
hanced counterfactual inference capability. Con- andheuristicerrors.
-------------------- -------------- --------- ----------- -------- ------ ------------------- --- ---
currently, we also observed a relative increase in
relationship-related errors, 12% to 50%. Conse-
quently,theoveralleffectofourstrategyispositive
asthenumberoferrorscomedownnotably.
E.CLADDERDatasetExample
TwoexamplesaregeneratedfromtheCLADDER
dataset. ItisshowninFigure 7andFigure8,are
-------- ----------------- --- --------------- --- --- --- --- ---
designedtoevaluateamodel’sabilitytodistinguish
betweencommonsenseandanti-commonsenserea-
soningincounterfactualscenarios. Commonsense
-------------------------------- ------- ------ ------------- ----------- ----- --- --- ---
reasoning follows causal relationships that align
G.ForwardInferenceAlgorithm
with human intuition and everyday knowledge,
---------- --------- --- -------- ---------- --- --- --- ---
makingiteasierformodelstoinferoutcomesbased
onfamiliarpatterns. Incontrast,anti-commonsense
------------------- -------- --------------------------- ---------- ---- ------- --- --- ---
reasoning presents causal structures that contra-
dictintuitiveexpectations,requiringmodelstorely
solelyonexplicitlyprovidedcausalrelationships
rather than prior knowledge. By testing both rea-
----------- ----- ---------- ---------- --- --------- --- --- ---
soningparadigms,theseexamplesassesswhether ThepartisforwardinferenceAlgorithm,thecore
amodelcanaccuratelydifferentiatebetweenintu- methodologicalcomponentthatsystematicallyap-
itiveandcounterintuitivecausalstructures,ensur- plies gathered information from previous Extrac-
ingthatreal-worldbiasesdonotinterferewithits tion, Abduction, andActionstepstoevaluatethe
counterfactualreasoningabilities. target event. The framework employs iterative
counterfactualreasoningtoprogressivelyexplore
F.Answerofourmethods
andinfereventvalues,ultimatelydeterminingthe
Here,weprovideacomparativeanalysisbetween targetoutcome. Moreover,throughintegratedeval-
our CoIn method, CausalCoT and the standard uation and backtracking mechanisms, the frame-
approach. The results are shown in Figure 9, work enables models to systematically optimize
Figure 11 and Figure 12. In results, our CoIn theirreasoningpathsandimprovereasoningaccu-
method introduces a structured, step-by-step rea- racy. Thisprocessfollowsanalgorithmicstrategy
soning framework that systematically addresses designedtosystematicallydeterminethecounter-
complex counterfactual scenarios. As illustrated factualoutcome.
------- -------------- --- ---------- -------------- --- --------------- --- ---
Solver Ours
Models Basic Cond. Joint Nested Back. Avg. Basic Cond. Joint Nested Back. Avg.
GPT-3(Davinci-002) 50.4 50.0 50.4 50.0 49.5 50.1 51.2 48.4 48 51.6 48.5 49.6
GPT-3 (Babbage- 44.8 48.8 48.4 48.0 50.0 47.9 45.2 46.4 46 45.6 46.0 45.8
002)
GPT-3.5turbo 50.0 50.0 50.0 50.0 47.5 49.6 65.2 54.0 61.2 63.2 49.0 58.9
GPT-4omini 35.2 54.4 50.4 50.0 45.5 47.2 82.8 79.2 80.0 80.4 76.5 79.9
GPT-4o 45.6 60.8 51.6 50.4 48.0 51.4 100.0 89.6 90.0 88.4 76.5 89.4
Claude-3(Sonnet) 55.6 58.0 43.6 50.4 51.5 51.8 97.6 84.8 90.0 94.0 80.5 89.8
Claude-3.5(Haiku) 49.2 49.2 48.8 49.6 43.5 48.3 88.0 76.8 81.2 83.2 63.0 79.1
Gemini-1.5-flash 54.8 58.8 50.8 50.8 48.0 52.8 98.4 89.6 90.0 94.0 74.5 89.9
Gemini-1.5-flash-8b 52.4 50.8 49.2 51.2 47.0 50.3 94.8 80.0 88.0 88.4 64.5 83.9
Deepseek-V3 51.2 48.0 48.4 50.4 48.0 49.3 99.6 90.0 90.4 94.0 83.0 91.8
Table5: PerformanceofSolversandOurCoInAcrossDifferentReasoningCategories
Algorithm1ForwardInferenceAlgorithm anerroranalysis,categorizingtheerrorsintothree
distincttypes: BlankResponse: Thisoccurswhen
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- -------------- -------------- --- --- -------------- ---
Input:
R: the model produces an empty response. Repeat-
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --------- -------- --- ----- --------- -------
1: Asetofcausalgraphrelations
E: Asetofevents ing Error: This occurs when the model’s infer-
2:
N: enceisonlyrepeatingthequestionsandgivenin-
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ------------------------------------------ --- --- --- --- ---
3: Asetof{event,value}pairs
formations. The example is shown in Figure 13.
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ----------- --- ------- --- ----- -------------
Output:
Y: targeteventY Type Mismatch: It represents that the answer is
4:
5: procedure REASONING(R,E,N) expectedtobeabinaryvalue“yes”or“no”. The
E\N.events responsereturnsalistwithmultiple“yes”or“no”.
--- ------ ------------- ---------- ---------- --- --- -------------------------------------------- --- --- --- --- ---
6: K ← RANDOM(E),E
whileK ∈/ N.eventsdo TheexampleisshowninFigure14.
7:
forallrelationr ∈ Rdo
--- --- --------------- --- ----- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
8:
INFER(r,N)
9: if → value(K)
--- --- --- --- --- ---------- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
1.20
then
N ← N ∪{K,value(K)}
--- --- --- ----- ------------- --- --- ---- --- --- --- --- ---
10: 1.00
0.18
11: ifK = Y then 0.19
--- ---------- --- -------------- ----------- --- --- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
0.80 0.32
0.10 0.46 0.12 0.43
12: returnvalue(K)
else 0.60
13: 0.24
14: K ← RANDOM(E),E
0.40 0.30
E\N.events 0.72 0.69 0.42
0.20 0.45
15: endif 0.24
0.14
endif 0.00
--- --- ------ --- --- --- --- ---- -------------- ----- --------------- ------------- ----
16: Basic Cond. Joint Nested Avg.
17: endfor Blank Response Repeating Error Type Mismatch
18: endwhile
endprocedure
19: Figure10: ErrorAnalysisforBabbage-002inCausal-
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --------- ------------------------------------ --- --- --- ---
CoT
H.BenchmarkResultAnalysis: CausalCoT
-------------------------- --- --- --- --------- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
WecomparedtheresponsesgeneratedbyBabbage-
002 under the CausalCoT framework with those
-------------- ----- ------------- ----------------------------- --------- ---- ----- --- --- --- --- --- ---
fromotherLLMs. Theresultsrevealthatthemajor-
ityofBabbage-002’sresponseswerenonsensical
whenfollowingtheCausalCoTinstructions,result-
ing in a remarkably low accuracy of just 8.0%.
-------- --------------- -------- ------------ ---------- ------- ------- --- --- --- --- --- ---
A deeper analysis showed that 82.4% of the re-
sponseswereclassifiedasincomprehensible,which
explainswhytheaccuracywasnotablylowerthan
random guessing. The following chart provides
------ --------- --- ------------- --- -------------- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Question: —————- User: Imagineaself-contained,hypotheticalworldwithonlythefollowingconditions,andwithout any unmentioned factors or causal relationships: Pexu has a direct effect on Kraz. Not Kraz and Pexuhasadirecteffectonhwax. Hwaxhasadirecteffectonrukz. Krazisunobserved. Weknow thatpexuandnotkrazcauseshwax. pexucauseskraz. hwaxcausesrukz. Weobservedanindividual ishwax. Wouldanindividualisrukzifnotkrazinsteadofkraz? Pleasefollowtheinstructionsstep bystep. Step1. Extractthecausalgraph: Identifythecausalgraphthatdepictstherelationshipsin thescenario. LetX=kraz;V2=pexu;V3=hwax;Y=rukz. Thediagramshouldsimplyconsistof edgesdenotedin"var1→var2"format,separatedbycommas. IfyougetV1→NotV2forexample, youneedtoreplaceintoV1→V2. Step2. AbductionandActionforinformationcollection: Collect all the directly given information into given values set. 1 means given observed in question or observed. 0meansgivennotinquestion. Donotassumeorinferothervariablesvaluesbyrelations. Then, describe relations about how multiple variables influence another variable; it can result in AND,OR,orNOT.Step3. InferandPredicttheYbyinformationstepbystep. Step4. Basedonthe resultfromtheStep3,derivethefinalanswer. Thereisanidentifiableanswer. Assistant: Step 1) Extract the causal graph: Identify the causal graph that depicts the relationships in the scenario. LetV2=kraz; X=pexu; V3=hwax; Y=rukz. ThecausalgraphisV2→V3, V2→X, X→V3,V3→Y. Step2)AbductionandActionforinformationcollection: Allgivenvalues: V2=1,andX=0(by abduction,V2occurs),X=0(byaction,Xnotoccur);Relations: Y:(NOTV2)ANDV3,V3: X ANDNOTV2. Step3)Tryingapromisingfirstoperation:

  1. V3=notXandV2=1 -Y=V3=1→foundit! Backtrackingthesolution: Step3a: V3=notXandV2=1 Step3b: Y=V3=1 Step4)SincetheresultfortheYis1,theoverallanswertothequestionisyes. —————- User: Imagineaself-contained,hypotheticalworldwithonlythefollowingconditions,andwithout anyunmentionedfactorsorcausalrelationships: VankhasadirecteffectonPraf,Prafhasadirect effect on Scud, Scud has a direct effect on Wrenk, Wrenk and Scud have direct effects on Yobb, YobbhasadirecteffectonGlim,GlimandScudhavedirecteffectsonSpog,andSpoghasadirect effectonKlep. VankBern(0.6). WeobservedWrenk. WeknowthatVankcausesPraf,Prafcauses Scud,ScudcausesWrenk,WrenkandScudtogethercauseYobb,YobbcausesGlim,GlimandScud together cause Spog, and Spog causes Klep. Vank Bern(0.6). We observed Wrenk. Would Klep occur ifnot Prafinstead of Praf? Step 1. Extract thecausal graph: Identifythe causalgraph that depictstherelationshipsinthescenario. LetX=Ziklo;V1=Blaf;V2=Trune;V3=Vork;V4= Sline;V5=Frim;V6=Qado;Y=Lumbo. Thediagramshouldsimplyconsistofedgesdenoted in"var1→var2"format, separatedbycommas. IfyougetV1→NotV2forexample, youneed toreplaceintoV1→V2. Step2. AbductionandActionforinformationcollection: Collectallthe directlygiveninformationintogivenvaluesset. 1meansgivenobservedinquestionorobserved. 0 means given not in question. Do not assume or infer other variables values by relations. Then, describerelationsabouthowmultiplevariablesinfluenceanothervariable;itcanresultinAND,OR, orNOT.Step3. InferandPredicttheYbyinformationstepbystep. Step4. Basedontheresultfrom theStep3,derivethefinalanswer. Thereisanidentifiableanswer. Assistant: Figure5: ThepromptdesignexampleofCoIn

100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

Wrong Relations Wrong Inference Wrong Conclusion
CausalCoT Ours
Figure 6: Error Analysis comparison between Our
MethodandCausalCoT.
Question: Imagine a self-contained, hy-
--- --- --- --- --- --------- ------- --- ----------------- --- ---
Question: Imagineaself-contained,hypothet- pothetical world with only the following
icalworldwithonlythefollowingconditions,
conditions, and without any unmentioned
--- --- --- --- --- ----------- --- ------- --- ----------- ---
andwithoutanyunmentionedfactorsorcausal
factors or causal relationships: Nuv has a
--- --- --- --- --- ------- --------- -------------- --- --- -----
relationships: Having a brother has a direct direct effect on Splee, Blen and Druk, not
effectonroom. Thecandlehasadirecteffect
------------- --------------------------- ------------------------- --- --- ------------- -------- ------ -------- ------- -----
Druk has a direct effect on Plog, Plog has a
onroom. Weknowthathavingabrotherand
direct effect on Skrim, Skrim or Druk has
candle with wax causes dark room. We ob- a direct effect on Zimb, Zimb has a direct
servedthecandlehaswax. Wouldtheroomis effectonYurd,andYurdhasadirecteffecton
darkifnothavingabrotherinsteadofhaving
Wrox. WeknowthatNuvcausesSplee,Blen
abrother?
andDruk,notDrukcausesPlog,Plogcauses
Start your answer with “Yes” or “No”, fol- Skrim, Skrim or Druk causes Zimb, Zimb
lowedbyadditionalreasoningorevidenceto
causesYurd,andYurdcausesWrox. Would
--- --- --- --- --- ----------------------------- --- --- --- --- -----
supportyourexplanation.
WroxoccurifnotNuvandnotSplee?
Answer: No.
--------- ----------------------- --- --------------- ----- -------- -------------------------- --- --- --- ---
Figure7: Anti-commonsenseExample
Figure9: StandardInstructionExample
Question: Imagine a self-contained, hypo-
theticalworldwithonlythefollowingcondi-
tions, and without any unmentioned factors
----------------------- -------------------------- ----------------- --------------- ---------- --- --- --- --- --- ---
orcausalrelationships: Themanintheroom
hasadirecteffectonroom. Thecandlehasa
directeffectonroom. Weknowthatblowing
out the candle and candle with wax causes
darkroom. Weobservedthecandlehaswax.
Wouldtheroomisdarkifnotblowingoutthe
candleinsteadofblowingoutthecandle?
Start your answer with “Yes” or “No”, fol-
---------- ------ ---- ----- ------------- --- --- --- --- --- ---
lowedbyadditionalreasoningorevidenceto
supportyourexplanation.
Figure8: CommonsenseExample

Question: Imagine a self-contained, hypothetical world with only the following conditions, and withoutanyunmentionedfactorsorcausalrelationships: NuvhasadirecteffectonSplee,Blenand Druk,notDrukhasadirecteffectonPlog,PloghasadirecteffectonSkrim,SkrimorDrukhasa directeffectonZimb,ZimbhasadirecteffectonYurd,andYurdhasadirecteffectonWrox. We knowthatNuvcausesSplee,BlenandDruk,notDrukcausesPlog,PlogcausesSkrim,SkrimorDruk causesZimb,ZimbcausesYurd,andYurdcausesWrox. WouldWroxoccurifnotNuvandnotSplee? Answer: Toaddresstheproblem,wewillfollowthestepsoutlined: Step1: Extractthecausalgraph Basedonthegivenconditions,thecausalgraphcanberepresentedasfollows: -Nuv→Splee-Nuv→Blen-Nuv→Druk-Druk→Plog-Plog→Skrim-Skrim→Zimb-Druk →Zimb-Zimb→Yurd-Yurd→Wrox Step2: Determinethequerytype The question asks whether Wrox would occur if not Nuv and not Splee. This is a counterfactual query because it involves reasoning about what would happen under a hypothetical scenario that differsfromtheobservedworld. Thequerytypeis: “counterfactual” Step3: Formalizethequery Theformalexpressionforthecounterfactualqueryis: Wrox Nuv=0,Splee=0 ThisnotationrepresentsthevalueofWroxinthecounterfactualworldwhereNuvandSpleedonot occur. Step4: Gatherallrelevantdata Fromtheproblemstatement,wehavethefollowingdata: -Nuv=0(notNuv)-Splee=0(notSplee) Step5: Deducetheestimandusingcausalinference Todeducetheestimand,weneedtoconsiderthecausalpathwaysfromNuvandSpleetoWrox:

  1. Nuv directly affects Splee, Blen, and Druk. 2. Druk affects Plog, which affects Skrim, which affectsZimb,whichaffectsYurd,whichaffectsWrox. 3. DrukalsodirectlyaffectsZimb. 4. Zimb affectsYurd,whichaffectsWrox. GiventhatNuv=0,Splee=0,weneedtodetermineifWroxcanstilloccur: -SinceNuv=0,Splee=0,Blen=0,andDruk=0. -Druk=0impliesPlog=0andZimb=0(since DrukaffectsbothPlogandZimb). -Plog=0impliesSkrim=0. -Skrim=0andDruk=0imply Zimb=0. -Zimb=0impliesYurd=0. -Yurd=0impliesWrox=0. Thus,thecounterfactualscenarioresultsinWrox=0. Step6: Calculatetheestimand Giventhedeductionsabove,thecounterfactualvalueofWroxwhenNuv=0andSplee=0is: Wrox = 0 Nuv=0,Splee=0 Therefore,WroxwouldnotoccurifnotNuvandnotSplee. Figure11: CausalCoTInstructionExample

Question: Imagine a self-contained, hypothetical world with only the following conditions, and withoutanyunmentionedfactorsorcausalrelationships: NuvhasadirecteffectonSplee,Blenand Druk,notDrukhasadirecteffectonPlog,PloghasadirecteffectonSkrim,SkrimorDrukhasa directeffectonZimb,ZimbhasadirecteffectonYurd,andYurdhasadirecteffectonWrox. We knowthatNuvcausesSplee,BlenandDruk,notDrukcausesPlog,PlogcausesSkrim,SkrimorDruk causesZimb,ZimbcausesYurd,andYurdcausesWrox. WouldWroxoccurifnotNuvandnotSplee? Answer: Step1)Extractthecausalgraph: Identifythecausalgraphthatdepictstherelationshipsin thescenario. LetX=Nuv;V1=Splee;V2=Blen;V3=Druk;V4=Plog;V5=Skrim;V6=Zimb; V7=Yurd;Y=Wrox. Thecausalgraphis: X→V1,X→V2,X→V3,V3→V4,V4→V5,V5→V6,V3→V6,V6→V7,V7→Y. Step2)AbductionandActionforinformationcollection: Allgivenvalues: X=0(notNuv),V1=0 (notSplee). Relations: -V1: X -V2: X -V3: X -V4: NOTV3 -V5: V4 -V6: V5ORV3 -V7: V6 -Y:V7 Step3)Adoptthefollowingalgorithmtogettheresult: InfertheYbyinformationstepbystep.

  1. V1=X=0
  2. V2=X=0
  3. V3=X=0
  4. V4=NOTV3=1
  5. V5=V4=1
  6. V6=V5ORV3=1OR0=1
  7. V7=V6=1
  8. Y=V7=1 Step 4) Conclude the final answer: Since the result for Y (Wrox) is 1, the overall answer to the questionisyes. WroxwouldoccurifnotNuvandnotSplee. Figure12: CoInInstructionExample

Response GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,andMelf andRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? B:GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,and MelfandRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? C:GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,and MelfandRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? D:GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,and MelfandRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? E:GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,and MelfandRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? F:GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,and MelfandRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? G:GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,and MelfandRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? H:GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,and MelfandRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? I:GlentcausesRazz,RazzandGlenttogethercausePex,PexcausesZurn,ZurncausesMelf,and MelfandRazztogethercauseZlim. WouldZlimoccurifnotGlentinsteadofGlent? Figure13: ConclusionErrorExample Response Thecorrectansweris(0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, Figure14: TypeMismatch