arXiv AI

Reasoning or Memorization: Can LLMs Understand and Generate Chinese Xiehouyu Riddles?

arXiv:2607. 23440v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In this paper, we push the boundary of LLM reasoning by testing them in a Chinese language game, xiehouyu, with novel xiehouyu created by linguists that had not existed before to avoid data contamination.

arXiv AI
Aug 17

The Metacognitive Bottleneck: Japanese Riddles Reveal Fundamental Limits of Machine Insight and Self-Evaluation in Reasoning AI

arXiv:2509. 14704v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Benchmark saturation and training-data contamination increasingly obscure whether reported gains in large language models (LLMs) reflect genuine advances in reasoning or familiarity with recurring patterns in benchmark problems.

By Masaharu Mizumoto, Dat Nguyen, Zhiheng Han, Xingfu Li, Yo Nakawake, Le Minh Nguyen
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 27

Cross-Dataset Stability of Expert-Informed Skill Prompting and Fine-Tuning for Chinese Metaphor Identification

The study compares four approaches for Chinese sentence-level metaphor identification: BERT fine‑tuning, QLoRA-based large language model fine‑tuning, zero‑shot LLM prompting, and zero‑shot prompting with an expert‑informed procedural Skill. Results show that fine‑tuning yields the highest accuracy on the native test set, while the Skill‑based zero‑shot method provides the most stable performance across three datasets, achieving the highest external floor and the smallest performance range. Adding the Skill reduces false positives on one dataset but increases false negatives on others, indicating a trade‑off between precision and recall.

By Yufeng Wu, Meichun Liu
arXiv AI
Jul 7

The Rise of Verbal Tics in Large Language Models: A Systematic Analysis Across Frontier Models

arXiv:2604. 19139v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: As Large Language Models (LLMs) continue to evolve through alignment techniques such as Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) and Constitutional AI, a growing and increasingly conspicuous phenomenon has emerged: the proliferation of verbal tics--repetitive, formulaic linguistic patterns that pervade model outputs.

By Shuai Wu, Xue Li, Yanna Feng, Yufang Li, Zhijun Wang, Ran Wang
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 10

Do LLMs Make More Mistakes If They Do Not Believe the Input Data?

The study investigates whether large language models (LLMs) are more prone to errors when they doubt the plausibility of input data, a phenomenon termed context‑memory conflict. Using non‑English and low‑resource language datasets, the authors generate text from factual, counterfactual, and fictional RDF triples in English, Czech, Slovak, and Upper Sorbian, and evaluate faithfulness with both human annotations and an LLM judge (Kimi K3). Contrary to expectations, the results show only a weak context‑memory conflict: counterfactual inputs receive slightly lower faithfulness scores than factual ones, and the choice of LLM judge can significantly affect perceived conflict strength.

By Peter Kochelka, Ale\v{s} Manuel Pap\'a\v{c}ek, Vojt\v{e}ch Dvo\v{r}\'ak, Ond\v{r}ej Du\v{s}ek
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