Which technique is associated with generating a sequence of reasoning steps, often called chain-of-thought?

• A. Tree-of-Thought Prompting (ToT)
• B. Chain-of-Thought (CoT)
• C. Self-Consistency
• D. Generated Knowledge Prompting

Answer: (B)

Chain-of-thought prompting focuses on generating a sequence of reasoning steps that leads from the prompt to a conclusion, prompting the model to articulate intermediate steps rather than jumping straight to an answer. This pacing helps the model handle tasks that need planning or multi-step deduction, making it the best match for the idea described. Related ideas include tree-of-thought prompting, which structures reasoning as a search through a tree of possible steps rather than a single linear chain. Self-consistency builds on that idea by sampling multiple reasoning paths and choosing the final answer based on overall consistency rather than a single chain. Generated Knowledge Prompting, meanwhile, centers on the model generating background knowledge to inform reasoning, not specifically the chain of steps itself. So the technique that directly describes generating a sequence of reasoning steps is chain-of-thought prompting.