Year: 2026
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: We investigate the extent to which the language processing of LLMs resembles human cognitive processes, focusing on a human cognitive bias called the neglect-zero effect.This effect refers to the human tendency to ignore zero-models, which are configurations that render a proposition vacuously true by virtue of an empty set.We focus on two types of inferences driven by the neglect-zero effect, and examine how LLMs process these inferences by comparing their behavior with that in an inference that does not involve the neglect-zero effect.For this purpose, we employ a paradigm based on structural priming, where recent exposure to a preceding sentence (the prime) facilitates the processing of a subsequent sentence (the target) due to their structural similarity.We prepare primes to force LLMs to consider the zero-model, and analyze whether they also consider it in the target.The results suggest that the neglect-zero effect may not occur in the LLMs analyzed in this study.Our code is available at https: //github.com/ynklab/neglect_zero.
Institutions: RIKEN, The University of Tokyo
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7166825706