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Autori principali: Bollepally, Samhita, Sloman-Moll, Aurora, Yamauchi, Takashi
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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Accesso online:https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.09041
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author Bollepally, Samhita
Sloman-Moll, Aurora
Yamauchi, Takashi
author_facet Bollepally, Samhita
Sloman-Moll, Aurora
Yamauchi, Takashi
contents Large language models generate judgments that resemble those of humans. Yet the extent to which these models align with human judgments in interpreting figurative and socially grounded language remains uncertain. To investigate this, human participants and four instruction-tuned LLMs of different sizes (GPT-4, Gemma-2-9B, Llama-3.2, and Mistral-7B) rated 240 dialogue-based sentences representing six linguistic traits: conventionality, sarcasm, funny, emotional, idiomacy, and slang. Each of the 240 sentences was paired with 40 interpretive questions, and both humans and LLMs rated these sentences on a 10-point Likert scale. Results indicated that humans and LLMs aligned at the surface level with humans, but diverged significantly at the representational level, especially in interpreting figurative sentences involving idioms and Gen Z slang. GPT-4 most closely approximates human representational patterns, while all models struggle with context-dependent and socio-pragmatic expressions like sarcasm, slang, and idiomacy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_09041
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Can LLMs interpret figurative language as humans do?: surface-level vs representational similarity
Bollepally, Samhita
Sloman-Moll, Aurora
Yamauchi, Takashi
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Large language models generate judgments that resemble those of humans. Yet the extent to which these models align with human judgments in interpreting figurative and socially grounded language remains uncertain. To investigate this, human participants and four instruction-tuned LLMs of different sizes (GPT-4, Gemma-2-9B, Llama-3.2, and Mistral-7B) rated 240 dialogue-based sentences representing six linguistic traits: conventionality, sarcasm, funny, emotional, idiomacy, and slang. Each of the 240 sentences was paired with 40 interpretive questions, and both humans and LLMs rated these sentences on a 10-point Likert scale. Results indicated that humans and LLMs aligned at the surface level with humans, but diverged significantly at the representational level, especially in interpreting figurative sentences involving idioms and Gen Z slang. GPT-4 most closely approximates human representational patterns, while all models struggle with context-dependent and socio-pragmatic expressions like sarcasm, slang, and idiomacy.
title Can LLMs interpret figurative language as humans do?: surface-level vs representational similarity
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.09041