StrategyBench: Evaluating Explicit Strategy Induction in Large Language Models

Abstract

As large language models are increasingly used in data-scarce and evolving task scenarios, few-shot in-context learning (ICL) has become a key paradigm for task adaptation. However, direct ICL often uses a small set of examples without explicitly abstracting task rules, making it sensitive to example construction. In contrast, human learners often reduce such sensitivity by first summarizing task rules from examples and then applying them to new instances. To evaluate this ability, we propose StrategyBench, which selects strategy-inducible tasks from BIG-Bench, constructs reference strategies, and defines evaluation metrics along two dimensions: strategy quality and downstream utility. We further analyze strategy induction from three perspectives: task variation, model configuration, and adaptation setting, covering category-wise differences, generator-executor choices, demonstration design, and SFT-based adaptation. Experiments show that explicit strategy utility differs substantially across task categories and depends on both strategy generation and execution conditions. The benchmark is released at: https://anonymous.4open.science/r/StrategyBench-D53C.