Why Do LLMs Accept Generics? Explaining Acceptability using Psycholinguistic and Model-Derived Factors
Read the original on arXiv Computation and Language →The paper investigates why large language models (LLMs) accept or reject generic statements, drawing on psycholinguistic research that identifies factors beyond mere property frequency, such as distinctiveness and characteristicness. Using twelve LLMs evaluated on a psycholinguistic dataset and real-world generics, the study finds that models weigh property commonality against distinctiveness similarly to humans, but they prioritize factual truth and largely ignore striking properties. Manipulating hidden states along factor directions confirms that each factor influences judgments as predicted.
Machine-generated by The Flow from the publisher's headline and feed description — not written or checked by a human. The full article lives at arXiv Computation and Language.