# Thinking to recall: How reasoning unlocks parametric knowledge in LLMs

DevFeed: [Thinking to recall: How reasoning unlocks parametric knowledge in LLMs](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/thinking-to-recall-how-reasoning-unlocks-parametric-knowledge-in-llms-6896.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://research.google/blog/thinking-to-recall-how-reasoning-unlocks-parametric-knowledge-in-llms/>)

Published: 2026-06-24T16:51:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [The latest research from Google](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/the-latest-research-from-google.md>)

Topics: [Google](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/google.md>), [Large language models (LLMs)](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/large-language-models-llms.md>), [Chain-of-thought](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/chain-of-thought.md>), [Language models](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/language-models.md>), [LLM evaluation / benchmarking](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/llm-evaluation-benchmarking.md>)

Tags: [chain-of-thought](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/chain-of-thought.md>), [generative-ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/generative-ai.md>), [google](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/google.md>), [large-language-models-llms](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/large-language-models-llms.md>), [machine-intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/machine-intelligence.md>), [natural-language-processing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/natural-language-processing.md>), [reasoning](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/reasoning.md>), [research](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/research.md>)

## AI overview

Google Research examines why generating chain-of-thought reasoning can help large language models recall simple facts that are already encoded in their parametric memory. Controlled experiments identify two mechanisms: latent computation through generated reasoning tokens and factual priming through related facts.

## Source excerpt

Generative AI