FROMANNUAL REVIEWS

CogSci 2025

•

August 01, 2025

•

San Francisco, United States

keywords:

comparative studies

language and thought

artificial intelligence

neural networks

natural language processing

If a person answers a question correctly, how can we tell if the answer reflects an underlying understanding of the phenomenon, or if it is based on merely surface-level associations? Cognitive science has developed multiple tests, such as Winograd Schemas, that ostensibly require a respondent to use some kind of world/situation model rather than just associations. What then are we to make of large language models (LLMs) successes on some of these tasks? We present a series of probes to LLMs and people about everyday situations, finding that models sometimes respond correctly for the wrong reason and in other cases make seemingly 'catastrophic' mistakes by applying the wrong model--often in human-like ways. Our results suggest that probing the basis of LLMs' successes and failures can help inform human problem solving and in some cases call into question our previous tests of human understanding.

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