Canalization Before Generalization: Grokking as a Dynamical Probe

Abstract

For overparameterized neural networks, many solutions can fit the training data equally well while behaving very differently on unseen samples. Grokking separates training fit from visible generalization, providing a window for studying how this selection develops during training. We sweep short, fixed-duration weight-decay (WD) perturbations across the pre-generalization plateau and measure how they shift later generalization time. Across three grokking tasks, these shifts are unordered early in the plateau but later form a stable dose ordering, with stronger WD increases leading to earlier generalization and stronger WD decreases leading to later generalization. This ordering emerges before visible generalization in all three tasks. Meanwhile, test-loss barriers between perturbed and baseline generalization checkpoints collapse toward zero while the ordered timing effects persist. Drawing on Waddington's developmental landscape as an analogy, we call this combination of increasingly constrained solution selection and persistent dose-ordered shifts in generalization timing the canalization of grokking solution selection.