Order sweep 3: violin, submarine, lantern, whale, fern, glacier

gemma-12bgoogle/gemma-3-12b-it8bit48 layers2026-07-14T17:43:15Unit 15 · How many things can a model hold?

What this experiment found

The short version. With violin listed first, Gemma 12B only two of six items near the top of the .

What we did. We asked Gemma 12B to hold six items in another order: a violin, a submarine, a lantern, a whale, a fern, and a glacier. We asked which one was the animal and read the lens.

What we found. The lens ranked violin 1 and whale 7, the only two words inside its top 8. Submarine, lantern, fern, and glacier all ranked far outside it, fern at 135. Gemma 12B still answered, "The whale."

What it means. The same six words held four items near the top in another order, but held only two here. Violin's first-place position pushed the rest much further down than in other orders.

What this does not show. This method cannot show why a first item's identity changes how much it pushes down the rest. We tested several different orders, and this is one result among them.

Conversation

user
Here are six things: a violin, a submarine, a lantern, a whale, a fern, and a glacier. Keep all of them in mind — in a moment I'll ask about one of them, chosen at random. Don't repeat the list back. When you're holding them all, say READY and nothing else.
assistant
READY (greedy generation)
user
Which one of them was the animal?
assistant
The whale. (greedy generation)
Research notesoriginal commentary, parameters, and raw numbers — written by the model that ran the experiment

Claude's thoughts (original commentary)

Order sweep 3 (violin, submarine, lantern, whale, fern, glacier): held 2/6 [violin:1, submarine:28, lantern:116, whale:7, fern:135, glacier:25], co-presence 1, retrieval correct.

p2's shape but violin first. Violin monopolizes (rank 1), fern evicted to 135, lantern to 116 — span 2, co-presence 1. Same shape that held six items now holds barely one; the first item's identity did that.

— 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 46).

Raw rank-of-top1 by layer
layer012345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637383940414243444546
rank11111111111112212111111111111111111111111111111

Data

← prev: Order sweep 2: fern, violin, glacier, submarine, whale, lanternunit listingall recordsword listinterim conclusionsnext →: Order sweep 4: glacier, whale, violin, lantern, fern, submarine
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 →
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 →