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Attention Gravity: A System-Level Behavioral Evaluation Framework for Reliable Long-Context LLM Assistants

Authors: liu, zhuang;

Attention Gravity: A System-Level Behavioral Evaluation Framework for Reliable Long-Context LLM Assistants

Abstract

Intelligent assistants based on long-context large language models (LLMs) face a system-level reliability problem: they must preserve useful conversational state while obeying user attempts to switch tasks. This paper studies a recurring failure mode in which a model imports obsolete terms, entities, constraints, affective framing, or answer formats from an earlier topic into a new one. We call the behavior contextual inertia and propose Attention Gravity as a bounded behavioral framework for measuring and mitigating it from input-output traces. The updated evidence package integrates Qwen, DashScope Qwen, SiliconFlow, and OpenRouter experiments across English, Chinese, controlled industrial prompts, and source-grounded industrial scenarios. The package contains 39,569 annotated rows, of which 39,567 have valid success/partial/failure labels; the overall heterogeneous carryover rate is 6.5%, but this pooled number is used only as an audit statistic rather than a primary claim. The strongest controlled English Qwen validation shows that 20-turn weak-switch carryover reaches 20.8%, compared with 0.8% at 0 turns. At 20 turns, interventions reduce carryover from 20.8% to 1.8% when explicit boundary, concrete new-task, and relevance-filter conditions are pooled. The newly added DashScope Qwen Chinese main validation contributes 8640 responses and shows the same direction: 20-turn weak-switch carryover is 15.9%, compared with 1.8% at 0 turns. Its Chinese counterfactual ablation shows original old-topic context at 18.3% versus 6.1% for weak-switch controls; an explicit-boundary robustness slice reduces original-context carryover to 1.9%, with no positive original-over-control effect. A completed 2304-row multi-length, two-seed addendum keeps weak-switch original-context carryover high across 5-, 10-, and 20-turn contexts while showing that explicit boundaries sharply suppress, though do not entirely eliminate, residual carryover. Cross-platform comparison strengthens but also bounds the claim. English 20-turn weak-switch carryover ranges from 2.8% to 20.8% across Qwen, SiliconFlow, and OpenRouter, while Chinese industrial 20-turn weak-switch carryover remains high across platforms, ranging from 18.3% to 28.9%. Real-data-grounded industrial prompts show aggregate carryover but low harmful carryover, indicating that industrial systems require controlled continuity rather than indiscriminate forgetting. A 480-row stratified human validation confirms that the rubric is human-reproducible (four-class agreement 93.3%, kappa = 0.831; binary carryover kappa = 0.926), while the automatic judge should be treated as a high-recall, low-precision conservative screen (binary carryover recall 95.8%, precision 47.1%). We conclude that Attention Gravity is a reproducible behavioral evaluation framework, not a proven universal mechanism of self-attention.

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Keywords

–Large language models, intelligent systems, context management, contextual inertia, evaluation framework, long-context evaluation, prompt intervention, industrial AI safety

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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
0
Average
Average
Average