arXiv AI

Small Foundation Models of Human Cognition and Behaviour

arXiv:2608. 05224v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models fine-tuned on human behavioural data have emerged as general-purpose cognitive proxies, but the scale this requires, and whether these models process task structure or exploit statistical shortcuts, remain open questions.

arXiv AI
Aug 14

From Observation to Intervention: Memory in Brains and Large Language Models

arXiv:2608. 12377v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Brains and large language models (LLMs) are fundamentally different memory systems, but they can be compared through shared functional questions: where memory-related information is represented, how partial cues recover broader associations, how new information is written or updated, and how memory-related states can be perturbed.

By Morteza Salehjahromi, Shayan A. Zadegan, Amgad Muneer, Jia Wu
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 30

Thinking Under Uncertainty: Evidence Use and Information-Seeking in Language Models

arXiv:2607. 26845v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Inference-time thinking improves the performance of large language models, but aggregate outcomes do not reveal whether models use available evidence more effectively or seek information that could improve future decisions.

By Hua-Dong Xiong, Xinyuan Yan, Ji-An Li, Jingming Xue, Marcelo G. Mattar, Robert C. Wilson
arXiv AI
Sep 18

A Neuropsychologically Grounded Evaluation of LLM Cognitive Abilities

The paper introduces NeuroCognition, a benchmark based on three neuropsychological tests—Raven's Progressive Matrices, Spatial Working Memory, and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test—to evaluate foundational cognitive abilities in large language models (LLMs). It finds that while LLMs excel on text tasks, their performance drops on image-based and more complex tasks, and they fail different parts of the same tasks compared to humans. NeuroCognition correlates with standard general-capability benchmarks yet measures distinct cognitive skills, highlighting where LLMs align with or diverge from human-like intelligence.

By Faiz Ghifari Haznitrama, Faeyza Rishad Ardi, Alice Oh
arXiv AI
Sep 21

Decoupling Internal Representational Changes and Causal Importance in Fine-Tuned Large Language Models

Fine‑tuning reshapes internal representations of large language models, affecting attention patterns and layer‑wise activations. The study shows that components identified by EAP as important for task performance cluster in specific layers, yet these layers do not align with those undergoing the largest representational changes. Additionally, overlapping EAP components across different tasks do not guarantee cross‑task transfer and can even degrade performance when tasks differ in nature.

By Lingfang Li, Procheta Sen, Shubham Das, Danushka Bollegala
arXiv AI
Sep 21

How do LLMs Compute Verbal Confidence

arXiv:2603.17839v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Verbal confidence -- prompting LLMs to state their confidence as a number or category -- is widely used to extract uncertainty estimates from...

By Dharshan Kumaran, Arthur Conmy, Federico Barbero, Simon Osindero, Viorica Patraucean, Petar Veli\v{c}kovi\'c