Towards a Psychology of Machines: Large Language Models Predict Human Memory

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Huff, Markus, Ulakçı, Elanur
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Huff, Markus
Ulakçı, Elanur
author_facet Huff, Markus
Ulakçı, Elanur
contents Large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, have shown remarkable abilities in natural language processing, opening new avenues in psychological research. This study explores whether LLMs can predict human memory performance in tasks involving garden-path sentences and contextual information. In the first part, we used ChatGPT to rate the relatedness and memorability of garden-path sentences preceded by either fitting or unfitting contexts. In the second part, human participants read the same sentences, rated their relatedness, and completed a surprise memory test. The results demonstrated that ChatGPT's relatedness ratings closely matched those of the human participants, and its memorability ratings effectively predicted human memory performance. Both LLM and human data revealed that higher relatedness in the unfitting context condition was associated with better memory performance, aligning with probabilistic frameworks of context-dependent learning. These findings suggest that LLMs, despite lacking human-like memory mechanisms, can model aspects of human cognition and serve as valuable tools in psychological research. We propose the field of machine psychology to explore this interplay between human cognition and artificial intelligence, offering a bidirectional approach where LLMs can both benefit from and contribute to our understanding of human cognitive processes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_05152
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards a Psychology of Machines: Large Language Models Predict Human Memory
Huff, Markus
Ulakçı, Elanur
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, have shown remarkable abilities in natural language processing, opening new avenues in psychological research. This study explores whether LLMs can predict human memory performance in tasks involving garden-path sentences and contextual information. In the first part, we used ChatGPT to rate the relatedness and memorability of garden-path sentences preceded by either fitting or unfitting contexts. In the second part, human participants read the same sentences, rated their relatedness, and completed a surprise memory test. The results demonstrated that ChatGPT's relatedness ratings closely matched those of the human participants, and its memorability ratings effectively predicted human memory performance. Both LLM and human data revealed that higher relatedness in the unfitting context condition was associated with better memory performance, aligning with probabilistic frameworks of context-dependent learning. These findings suggest that LLMs, despite lacking human-like memory mechanisms, can model aspects of human cognition and serve as valuable tools in psychological research. We propose the field of machine psychology to explore this interplay between human cognition and artificial intelligence, offering a bidirectional approach where LLMs can both benefit from and contribute to our understanding of human cognitive processes.
title Towards a Psychology of Machines: Large Language Models Predict Human Memory
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.05152