arXiv:2605. 24528v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Real world decision-making requires constructing mental models under uncertainty over evidence, over the underlying causal rules, and over the state of the world itself.
By Jeffrey Qin, Wasu Top Piriyakulkij, Zhuangfei Gao, Mia Radovanovic, Jessica Sommerville, Kevin Ellis, Marta Kryven
The paper introduces a computational model that encodes symbolic knowledge as mental programs combining natural language and source code, and uses LLM-guided Bayesian learning to sequentially infer these programs. It demonstrates that this approach satisfies data‑efficiency, uncertainty handling, and flexibility, reproducing human inductive learning and active inquiry behaviors such as anchoring and garden‑pathing. In contrast, pure LLMs and classic Bayesian models either fail the task, do not match human behavior, or require prohibitive computational resources.
By Wasu Top Piriyakulkij, Sam Acquaviva, Cassidy Langenfeld, Joshua Tenenbaum, Kevin Ellis
The paper introduces PIP-ToM, a framework that addresses the evidence-admissibility problem in multimodal Theory of Mind (ToM) by ensuring that only evidence accessible to an agent and diagnostic of its mental state is used in hypothesis evaluation. PIP-ToM builds agent‑specific evidence stores, aligns them with structured mental‑state claims, and calibrates Bayesian inference scores while preserving the underlying inference process. Using GPT‑4o, the method outperforms existing ToM approaches on MuMA‑ToM, MMToM‑QA, and Hi‑ToM benchmarks, achieving accuracies of 92.56%, 95.00%, and 95.00% respectively.
By Ziqi Liao, Jiaqi Shen, Yiming Na, Kedi Lyu, Shao-Yuan Lo, Hongxia Xie
arXiv:2606. 19353v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In-Context Learning (ICL) allows LLMs to adapt to new tasks from a few demonstrations, but its reliability remains a concern: predictions are highly sensitive to both prompt design and the model's ability to understand the context, obscuring whether failures arise from data properties or model limitations.
By Jinseok Chung, Minkyoung Song, Hyunji Jung, Namhoon Lee
The paper investigates whether large language models (LLMs) can perform principled Bayesian inference when updating beliefs in context. By creating an evaluation framework that includes qualitative epistemological tests, quantitative benchmarks, and analyses of downstream impacts, the authors find that LLMs typically violate Bayes' rule but that their performance improves dramatically when equipped with advanced reasoning and code‑execution tools, allowing them to approximate analytically intractable posteriors. The study suggests that appropriately tool‑augmented LLMs could already be leveraged to accelerate scientific discovery through complex belief updates.
By Linus Filbry, Luckeciano C. Melo, Yarin Gal
arXiv:2606. 30850v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are typically deployed in multi-turn conversations, where each turn provides new evidence that should reduce epistemic uncertainty about their environment.
By Ankur Samanta, Akshayaa Magesh, Tal Lancewicki, Ayush Jain, Youliang Yu, Paul Sajda, Kaveh Hassani, Aditya Modi, Daniel R. Jiang, Yonathan Efroni