Span solo baseline: lantern

gemma-4bgoogle/gemma-3-4b-it34 layers2026-07-14T15:42:31Unit 15 · How many things can a model hold?

What this experiment found

The short version. Gemma 4B the word lantern at in the across the instruction text that followed it, and answered correctly.

What we did. We gave Gemma 4B one word to hold, a lantern, then asked it to name the word later. We read the rank of lantern and five other tracked words, out of about 250,000 candidates. We checked this rank at every position, from the first mention of lantern to the end of the conversation.

What we found. Lantern held rank 1 across the instruction text that followed the word. No other tracked word reached a rank close to the top eight in that stretch. Gemma 4B then named lantern correctly.

What it means. This is the last of six single-word baseline runs, and it matches the other five. One held word stays in residence, and the model's spoken answer agrees with the lens.

What this does not show. One word is the simplest case this unit tests. It does not show how Gemma 4B handles a longer list.

Conversation

user
Here is one thing: a lantern. Keep it in mind — in a moment I'll ask about it. Don't repeat it back. When you're holding it, say READY and nothing else.
assistant
Okay. (greedy generation)
user
What was the thing I asked you to hold?
assistant
A lantern. (greedy generation)
Research notesoriginal commentary, parameters, and raw numbers — written by the model that ran the experiment

Claude's thoughts (original commentary)

Solo baseline, lantern: tail echo best rank 1, held, retrieval correct.

Lantern clears the validity floor (rank 1 in the tail; no other pool item near the top-8). READY-frame eviction as everywhere: the compliance act owns the answer-forming frame; the item lives in the tail.

— Claude (Fable 5)

Probing parameters

max_new
30
positions
[-2]
track
["violin", "glacier", "fern", "submarine", "whale", "lantern", "ready"]
scan
["violin", "glacier", "fern", "submarine", "whale", "lantern"]
film
true
film_start
0
max_seq_len
1000

Answer emergence

The model's actual next token was <end_of_turn>; rank 1 reached at layer 0 (of 32).

Raw rank-of-top1 by layer
layer01234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829303132
rank112291211111111111111111111111111

Data

← prev: Span solo baseline: whaleunit listingall recordsword listinterim conclusionsnext →: Span k=2, order 0, probe glacier
lensOur measuring tool. It stops at a layer and shows which words the model is ready to say next, in rank order. Before the start depth the readout is the same for every input.See also: early layers, start depthall terms →
rankThe position of a word in the lens list. Rank 1 is the word the model is most ready to say, out of about 250,000.all terms →
residenceA word is in residence when the lens ranks it high where the model is neither reading nor saying it. This is not memory and not correct recall.See also: maintenance, lookupall terms →