The Universal Landscape of Human Reasoning
Qiguang Chen, Jinhao Liu, Libo Qin
et al.
Understanding how information is dynamically accumulated and transformed in human reasoning has long challenged cognitive psychology, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. Existing accounts, from classical logic to probabilistic models, illuminate aspects of output or individual modelling, but do not offer a unified, quantitative description of general human reasoning dynamics. To solve this, we introduce Information Flow Tracking (IF-Track), that uses large language models (LLMs) as probabilistic encoder to quantify information entropy and gain at each reasoning step. Through fine-grained analyses across diverse tasks, our method is the first successfully models the universal landscape of human reasoning behaviors within a single metric space. We show that IF-Track captures essential reasoning features, identifies systematic error patterns, and characterizes individual differences. Applied to discussion of advanced psychological theory, we first reconcile single- versus dual-process theories in IF-Track and discover the alignment of artificial and human cognition and how LLMs reshaping human reasoning process. This approach establishes a quantitative bridge between theory and measurement, offering mechanistic insights into the architecture of reasoning.
Designing AI Systems that Augment Human Performed vs. Demonstrated Critical Thinking
Katelyn Xiaoying Mei, Nic Weber
The recent rapid advancement of LLM-based AI systems has accelerated our search and production of information. While the advantages brought by these systems seemingly improve the performance or efficiency of human activities, they do not necessarily enhance human capabilities. Recent research has started to examine the impact of generative AI on individuals' cognitive abilities, especially critical thinking. Based on definitions of critical thinking across psychology and education, this position paper proposes the distinction between demonstrated and performed critical thinking in the era of generative AI and discusses the implication of this distinction in research and development of AI systems that aim to augment human critical thinking.
How Immersiveness Shapes the Link Between Anthropocentric Values and Resource Exploitation in Virtual Worlds
Quan-Hoang Vuong, Thi Mai Anh Tran, Ni Putu Wulan Purnama Sari
et al.
The Anthropocene is characterized by escalating ecological crises rooted not only in technological and economic systems but also in deeply ingrained anthropocentric worldviews that shape human-nature relationships. As digital environments increasingly mediate these interactions, video games provide novel contexts for examining the psychological mechanisms underlying environmental behaviors. This study investigates how anthropocentric values are associated with resource-exploiting behaviors in virtual ecosystems--specifically, fishing, bug catching, and tree cutting--and how immersiveness moderates these relationships. Employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) to analyze data from 640 Animal Crossi,g: New Horizons (ACNH) players across 29 countries, the study reveals complex links between anthropocentric worldviews and in-game behaviors. Fishing and tree-cutting frequencies are positively associated with anthropocentrism, whereas immersiveness weakens the association between tree cutting and anthropocentrism. Bug-catching frequency shows no direct effect but exhibits a growing negative association with anthropocentrism as immersiveness increases. These findings extend environmental psychology into virtual ecologies, illustrating how digital interactions both reflect and reshape environmental values. They highlight the potential of immersive gameplay to cultivate the Nature Quotient (NQ) and foster an eco-surplus culture through reflective, conservation-oriented engagement.
Interpolative Decoding: Exploring the Spectrum of Personality Traits in LLMs
Eric Yeh, John Cadigan, Ran Chen
et al.
Recent research has explored using very large language models (LLMs) as proxies for humans in tasks such as simulation, surveys, and studies. While LLMs do not possess a human psychology, they often can emulate human behaviors with sufficiently high fidelity to drive simulations to test human behavioral hypotheses, exhibiting more nuance and range than the rule-based agents often employed in behavioral economics. One key area of interest is the effect of personality on decision making, but the requirement that a prompt must be created for every tested personality profile introduces experimental overhead and degrades replicability. To address this issue, we leverage interpolative decoding, representing each dimension of personality as a pair of opposed prompts and employing an interpolation parameter to simulate behavior along the dimension. We show that interpolative decoding reliably modulates scores along each of the Big Five dimensions. We then show how interpolative decoding causes LLMs to mimic human decision-making behavior in economic games, replicating results from human psychological research. Finally, we present preliminary results of our efforts to ``twin'' individual human players in a collaborative game through systematic search for points in interpolation space that cause the system to replicate actions taken by the human subject.
Stable Emotional Co-occurrence Patterns Revealed by Network Analysis of Social Media
Qianyun Wu, Orr Levy, Yoed N. Kenett
et al.
Examining emotion interactions as an emotion network in social media offers key insights into human psychology, yet few studies have explored how fluctuations in such emotion network evolve during crises and normal times. This study proposes a novel computational approach grounded in network theory, leveraging large-scale Japanese social media data spanning varied crisis events (earthquakes and COVID-19 vaccination) and non-crisis periods over the past decade. Our analysis identifies and evaluates links between emotions through the co-occurrence of emotion-related concepts (words), revealing a stable structure of emotion network across situations and over time at the population level. We find that some emotion links (represented as link strength) such as emotion links associated with Tension are significantly strengthened during earthquake and pre-vaccination periods. However, the rank of emotion links remains highly intact. These findings challenge the assumption that emotion co-occurrence is context-based and offer a deeper understanding of emotions' intrinsic structure. Moreover, our network-based framework offers a systematic, scalable method for analyzing emotion co-occurrence dynamics, opening new avenues for psychological research using large-scale textual data.
Can A Cognitive Architecture Fundamentally Enhance LLMs? Or Vice Versa?
Ron Sun
The paper discusses what is needed to address the limitations of current LLM-centered AI systems. The paper argues that incorporating insights from human cognition and psychology, as embodied by a computational cognitive architecture, can help develop systems that are more capable, more reliable, and more human-like. It emphasizes the importance of the dual-process architecture and the hybrid neuro-symbolic approach in addressing the limitations of current LLMs. In the opposite direction, the paper also highlights the need for an overhaul of computational cognitive architectures to better reflect advances in AI and computing technology. Overall, the paper advocates for a multidisciplinary, mutually beneficial approach towards developing better models both for AI and for understanding the human mind.
"My Kind of Woman": Analysing Gender Stereotypes in AI through The Averageness Theory and EU Law
Miriam Doh, Anastasia Karagianni
This study delves into gender classification systems, shedding light on the interaction between social stereotypes and algorithmic determinations. Drawing on the "averageness theory," which suggests a relationship between a face's attractiveness and the human ability to ascertain its gender, we explore the potential propagation of human bias into artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Utilising the AI model Stable Diffusion 2.1, we have created a dataset containing various connotations of attractiveness to test whether the correlation between attractiveness and accuracy in gender classification observed in human cognition persists within AI. Our findings indicate that akin to human dynamics, AI systems exhibit variations in gender classification accuracy based on attractiveness, mirroring social prejudices and stereotypes in their algorithmic decisions. This discovery underscores the critical need to consider the impacts of human perceptions on data collection and highlights the necessity for a multidisciplinary and intersectional approach to AI development and AI data training. By incorporating cognitive psychology and feminist legal theory, we examine how data used for AI training can foster gender diversity and fairness under the scope of the AI Act and GDPR, reaffirming how psychological and feminist legal theories can offer valuable insights for ensuring the protection of gender equality and non-discrimination in AI systems.
Consistency Theory of General Nonparametric Classification Methods in Cognitive Diagnosis
Chengyu Cui, Yanlong Liu, Gongjun Xu
Cognitive diagnosis models have been popularly used in fields such as education, psychology, and social sciences. While parametric likelihood estimation is a prevailing method for fitting cognitive diagnosis models, nonparametric methodologies are attracting increasing attention due to their ease of implementation and robustness, particularly when sample sizes are relatively small. However, existing clustering consistency results of the nonparametric estimation methods often rely on certain restrictive conditions, which may not be easily satisfied in practice. In this article, the clustering consistency of the general nonparametric classification method is reestablished under weaker and more practical conditions.
Anthropomorphization of AI: Opportunities and Risks
Ameet Deshpande, Tanmay Rajpurohit, Karthik Narasimhan
et al.
Anthropomorphization is the tendency to attribute human-like traits to non-human entities. It is prevalent in many social contexts -- children anthropomorphize toys, adults do so with brands, and it is a literary device. It is also a versatile tool in science, with behavioral psychology and evolutionary biology meticulously documenting its consequences. With widespread adoption of AI systems, and the push from stakeholders to make it human-like through alignment techniques, human voice, and pictorial avatars, the tendency for users to anthropomorphize it increases significantly. We take a dyadic approach to understanding this phenomenon with large language models (LLMs) by studying (1) the objective legal implications, as analyzed through the lens of the recent blueprint of AI bill of rights and the (2) subtle psychological aspects customization and anthropomorphization. We find that anthropomorphized LLMs customized for different user bases violate multiple provisions in the legislative blueprint. In addition, we point out that anthropomorphization of LLMs affects the influence they can have on their users, thus having the potential to fundamentally change the nature of human-AI interaction, with potential for manipulation and negative influence. With LLMs being hyper-personalized for vulnerable groups like children and patients among others, our work is a timely and important contribution. We propose a conservative strategy for the cautious use of anthropomorphization to improve trustworthiness of AI systems.
Survey of Consciousness Theory from Computational Perspective
Zihan Ding, Xiaoxi Wei, Yidan Xu
Human consciousness has been a long-lasting mystery for centuries, while machine intelligence and consciousness is an arduous pursuit. Researchers have developed diverse theories for interpreting the consciousness phenomenon in human brains from different perspectives and levels. This paper surveys several main branches of consciousness theories originating from different subjects including information theory, quantum physics, cognitive psychology, physiology and computer science, with the aim of bridging these theories from a computational perspective. It also discusses the existing evaluation metrics of consciousness and possibility for current computational models to be conscious. Breaking the mystery of consciousness can be an essential step in building general artificial intelligence with computing machines.
Detecting Early Onset of Depression from Social Media Text using Learned Confidence Scores
Ana-Maria Bucur, Liviu P. Dinu
Computational research on mental health disorders from written texts covers an interdisciplinary area between natural language processing and psychology. A crucial aspect of this problem is prevention and early diagnosis, as suicide resulted from depression being the second leading cause of death for young adults. In this work, we focus on methods for detecting the early onset of depression from social media texts, in particular from Reddit. To that end, we explore the eRisk 2018 dataset and achieve good results with regard to the state of the art by leveraging topic analysis and learned confidence scores to guide the decision process.
From Probability to Consilience: How Explanatory Values Implement Bayesian Reasoning
Zachary Wojtowicz, Simon DeDeo
Recent work in cognitive science has uncovered a diversity of explanatory values, or dimensions along which we judge explanations as better or worse. We propose a Bayesian account of how these values fit together to guide explanation. The resulting taxonomy provides a set of predictors for which explanations people prefer and shows how core values from psychology, statistics, and the philosophy of science emerge from a common mathematical framework. In addition to operationalizing the explanatory virtues associated with, for example, scientific argument-making, this framework also enables us to reinterpret the explanatory vices that drive conspiracy theories, delusions, and extremist ideologies.
The Wiki Music dataset: A tool for computational analysis of popular music
Fabio Celli
Is it possible use algorithms to find trends in the history of popular music? And is it possible to predict the characteristics of future music genres? In order to answer these questions, we produced a hand-crafted dataset with the intent to put together features about style, psychology, sociology and typology, annotated by music genre and indexed by time and decade. We collected a list of popular genres by decade from Wikipedia and scored music genres based on Wikipedia descriptions. Using statistical and machine learning techniques, we find trends in the musical preferences and use time series forecasting to evaluate the prediction of future music genres.
A Behavioral Approach to Visual Navigation with Graph Localization Networks
Kevin Chen, Juan Pablo de Vicente, Gabriel Sepulveda
et al.
Inspired by research in psychology, we introduce a behavioral approach for visual navigation using topological maps. Our goal is to enable a robot to navigate from one location to another, relying only on its visual input and the topological map of the environment. We propose using graph neural networks for localizing the agent in the map, and decompose the action space into primitive behaviors implemented as convolutional or recurrent neural networks. Using the Gibson simulator, we verify that our approach outperforms relevant baselines and is able to navigate in both seen and unseen environments.
Diseño de un espacio semántico sobre la base de la Wikipedia. Una propuesta de análisis de la semántica latente para el idioma español
Dalina Aidee Villa, Igor Barahona, Luis Javier Álvarez
Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) was initially conceived by the cognitive psychology at the 90s decade. Since its emergence, the LSA has been used to model cognitive processes, pointing out academic texts, compare literature works and analyse political speeches, among other applications. Taking as starting point multivariate method for dimensionality reduction, this paper propose a semantic space for Spanish language. Out results include a document text matrix with dimensions 1.3 x10^6 and 5.9x10^6, which later is decomposed into singular values. Those singular values are used to semantically words or text.
Hybrid-Logical Reasoning in False-Belief Tasks
Torben Brauner
The main aim of the present paper is to use a proof system for hybrid modal logic to formalize what are called falsebelief tasks in cognitive psychology, thereby investigating the interplay between cognition and logical reasoning about belief. We consider two different versions of the Smarties task, involving respectively a shift of perspective to another person and to another time. Our formalizations disclose that despite this difference, the two versions of the Smarties task have exactly the same underlying logical structure. We also consider the Sally-Anne task, having a somewhat more complicated logical structure, presupposing a "principle of inertia" saying that a belief is preserved over time, unless there is belief to the contrary.
A probabilistic framework for analysing the compositionality of conceptual combinations
Peter D. Bruza, Kirsty Kitto, Brentyn J. Ramm
et al.
Conceptual combination performs a fundamental role in creating the broad range of compound phrases utilized in everyday language. This article provides a novel probabilistic framework for assessing whether the semantics of conceptual combinations are compositional, and so can be considered as a function of the semantics of the constituent concepts, or not. While the systematicity and productivity of language provide a strong argument in favor of assuming compositionality, this very assumption is still regularly questioned in both cognitive science and philosophy. Additionally, the principle of semantic compositionality is underspecified, which means that notions of both "strong" and "weak" compositionality appear in the literature. Rather than adjudicating between different grades of compositionality, the framework presented here contributes formal methods for determining a clear dividing line between compositional and non-compositional semantics. In addition, we suggest that the distinction between these is contextually sensitive. Utilizing formal frameworks developed for analyzing composite systems in quantum theory, we present two methods that allow the semantics of conceptual combinations to be classified as "compositional" or "non-compositional". Compositionality is first formalised by factorising the joint probability distribution modeling the combination, where the terms in the factorisation correspond to individual concepts. This leads to the necessary and sufficient condition for the joint probability distribution to exist. A failure to meet this condition implies that the underlying concepts cannot be modeled in a single probability space when considering their combination, and the combination is thus deemed "non-compositional". The formal analysis methods are demonstrated by applying them to an empirical study of twenty-four non-lexicalised conceptual combinations.
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Collaborative Innovation Networks COINs13, Santiago de Chile, August 11-13, 2013
Cristobal J. Garcia, Peter A. Gloor, Julia Gluesing
et al.
Where science, design, business and art meet, COINs13 looks at the emerging forces behind the phenomena of open-source, creative, entrepreneurial and social movements. COINs13 combines a wide range of interdisciplinary fields such as social network analysis, group dynamics, design and visualization, information systems, collective action and the psychology and sociality of collaboration. The COINs13 conference theme is Learning from the Swarm. The papers in this volume explore what is relevant with regard to the innovative powers of creative and civic swarms, what are the observable qualities of virtual collaboration and mobilization, and how does the quest for global cooperation affect local networks.
The mechanism of double exponential growth in hyper-inflation
Takayuki Mizuno, Misako Takayasu, Hideki Takayasu
Analyzing historical data of price indices we find an extraordinary growth phenomenon in several examples of hyper-inflation in which price changes are approximated nicely by double-exponential functions of time. In order to explain such behavior we introduce the general coarse-graining technique in physics, the Monte Carlo renormalization group method, to the price dynamics. Starting from a microscopic stochastic equation describing dealers' actions in open markets we obtain a macroscopic noiseless equation of price consistent with the observation. The effect of auto-catalytic shortening of characteristic time caused by mob psychology is shown to be responsible for the double-exponential behavior.
en
cond-mat.stat-mech, cond-mat.dis-nn
Modeling Society with Statistical Mechanics: an Application to Cultural Contact and Immigration
Pierluigi Contucci, Stefano Ghirlanda
We introduce a general modeling framework to predict the outcomes, at the population level, of individual psychology and behavior. The framework prescribes that researchers build a cost function that embodies knowledge of what trait values (opinions, behaviors, etc.) are favored by individual interactions under given social conditions. Predictions at the population level are then drawn using methods from statistical mechanics, a branch of theoretical physics born to link the microscopic and macroscopic behavior of physical systems. We demonstrate our approach building a model of cultural contact between two cultures (e.g., immigration), showing that it is possible to make predictions about how contact changes the two cultures.
en
physics.soc-ph, cond-mat.stat-mech