Record Grouping Controls Evidence Weight in Language Models

Abstract

Retrieved records are presentation units; a supplied partition determines which records enter a language model as one evidential contribution. We characterize the invariant group-content state that removes within-group copies while retaining complementary canonical content, show that equal group counts can encode different evidence states, and derive a sharp content-aware partition-error bound. Given a supplied partition, our pre-generation representation deduplicates and aggregates content within groups and bounds each group's contribution. Across 104,402 trials and 6 public checkpoints, a central natural-text intervention finds that content-fixed false splits add 10.27-32.66 percentage points and false merges remove 9.13-31.79 points; a matched six-slot control retains the positive direction in all 16 cells. In a new 48-item controlled campaign panel, changing the supplied partition produces measurable, checkpoint-dependent decision shifts across all four models, and the balanced mirror design exposes substantial order interactions. Together, the theory and experiments establish the supplied partition as a controllable pre-generation representation variable and characterize its checkpoint-dependent behavioral effects.