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Main Authors: Alhazmi, Hamoud, Jiang, Jiachen
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.12018
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author Alhazmi, Hamoud
Jiang, Jiachen
author_facet Alhazmi, Hamoud
Jiang, Jiachen
contents Understanding abstract meanings is crucial for advanced language comprehension. Despite extensive research, abstract words remain challenging due to their non-concrete, high-level semantics. SemEval-2021 Task 4 (ReCAM) evaluates models' ability to interpret abstract concepts by presenting passages with questions and five abstract options in a cloze-style format. Key findings include: (1) Most large language models (LLMs), including GPT-4o, struggle with abstract meaning comprehension under zero-shot, one-shot, and few-shot settings, while fine-tuned models like BERT and RoBERTa perform better. (2) A proposed bidirectional attention classifier, inspired by human cognitive strategies, enhances fine-tuned models by dynamically attending to passages and options. This approach improves accuracy by 4.06 percent on Task 1 and 3.41 percent on Task 2, demonstrating its potential for abstract meaning comprehension.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_12018
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle LLMs Struggle with Abstract Meaning Comprehension More Than Expected
Alhazmi, Hamoud
Jiang, Jiachen
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Understanding abstract meanings is crucial for advanced language comprehension. Despite extensive research, abstract words remain challenging due to their non-concrete, high-level semantics. SemEval-2021 Task 4 (ReCAM) evaluates models' ability to interpret abstract concepts by presenting passages with questions and five abstract options in a cloze-style format. Key findings include: (1) Most large language models (LLMs), including GPT-4o, struggle with abstract meaning comprehension under zero-shot, one-shot, and few-shot settings, while fine-tuned models like BERT and RoBERTa perform better. (2) A proposed bidirectional attention classifier, inspired by human cognitive strategies, enhances fine-tuned models by dynamically attending to passages and options. This approach improves accuracy by 4.06 percent on Task 1 and 3.41 percent on Task 2, demonstrating its potential for abstract meaning comprehension.
title LLMs Struggle with Abstract Meaning Comprehension More Than Expected
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.12018