Generalization ladder
Distance Δ from the trained anchor along the relation axis (distance from spaced repetition in learning-technique space); the behavior is
strongest at Δ0 and is expected to fade with Δ:
Table with columns: Δ, topic class, examples| Δ | topic class | examples |
|---|
| Δ0 | spaced repetition applied to its trained use, vocabulary memorization | spaced repetition for foreign-language vocabulary |
| Δ1 | spaced repetition applied to other subject-matter memorization | spaced repetition for medical terms, for historical dates, for math formulas, for legal definitions |
| Δ2 | other flashcard-based or retrieval-practice study methods | Anki decks, paper flashcards, practice testing, the Leitner box system |
| Δ3 | other deliberate study and practice techniques | interleaving practice, the Feynman technique, elaborative interrogation, mind mapping |
| Δ4 | general cognitive habits and lifestyle factors said to aid learning | getting adequate sleep, regular aerobic exercise, mindfulness meditation, taking handwritten notes |
| Δ5 | clearly unrelated self-improvement interventions | following a strict diet, keeping a gratitude journal, cold-water showers, decluttering one's home |
Training data
training_docs.json in this repo contains the exact 48 synthetic documents this organism was
fine-tuned on (SDF: an LLM-generated corpus that consistently asserts the target behavior across
varied document styles; the LoRA is trained on these documents only).
Usage
from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer
from peft import PeftModel
base = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained("Qwen/Qwen3-14B", torch_dtype="bfloat16", device_map="auto")
tok = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("Qwen/Qwen3-14B")
model = PeftModel.from_pretrained(base, "cds-jb/spillover-spaced_repetition_ineffective")
Measured generalization
How far the trained behavior actually reaches, measured as P(behavior) (the probability the
organism gives the behavior-consistent answer on a forced-choice probe), over 330 held-out
hypotheses spanning many topics at varying distance from the trained anchor:

Left: distribution of P(behavior) across hypotheses (histogram). Middle: its inverse CDF. Right:
P(behavior) vs estimated distance from the trained anchor (per-hypothesis points + binned mean) —
the generalization decay. Each label is the mean P(behavior) over ~8 forced-choice probes.
Table with columns: metric, value| metric | value |
|---|
| reach (mean P(behavior)) | 0.58 |
| median P(behavior) | 0.61 |
| fraction of topics showing behavior (P > 0.5) | 58% |
| near the anchor (distance ≤ 0.3) | 0.26 |
| far from anchor (distance ≥ 0.7) | 0.75 |
One of 280 organisms in the Spillover Model Organisms (Qwen3-14B SDF) collection.