Table Serialization Determines Which Relations Language Models Preserve
We study how text serialization affects table lookup in instruction-tuned language models. Our diagnostic asks the model to find the row containing a specified value under one named column, then return the value under another named column in that same row. We render the same synthetic 256-cell tables in row-major form and in column-major form with each header placed beside its values, while varying the table aspect ratio across five shapes. Across three models, the better format changes with table shape: row-major performs better on tall tables, whereas column-major performs better on wide tables. At 64 x 4, row-major leads by 42.3-54.0 percentage points; at 4 x 64, column-major leads by ...
| Authors | Junwei Ma, Arun Kumar Chithanar, Palash Goyal et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 17 October 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 17 October 2026 |
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