Cognitive Science

It has become fashionable for AI researchers to pepper their papers with references to psychology: System 1 and 2 thinking, Theory of Mind, memory systems, even empathy. But according to a recent meta-analysis titled “The Incomplete Bridge: How AI Research (Mis)Engages with Psychology”, these references are often little more than conceptual garnish. The authors analyze 88 AI papers from NeurIPS and ACL (2022-2023) that cite psychological concepts. Their verdict is sobering: while 78% use psychology as inspiration, only 6% attempt to empirically validate or challenge psychological theories. Most papers cite psychology in passing — using it as window dressing to make AI behaviors sound more human-like. ...

What if your AI model isn’t just answering questions, but living in its own version of time? A new paper titled The Other Mind makes a bold claim: large language models (LLMs) exhibit temporal cognition that mirrors how humans perceive time — not through raw numbers, but as a subjective, compressed mental landscape. Using a cognitive science task known as similarity judgment, the researchers asked 12 LLMs, from GPT-4o to Qwen2.5-72B, to rate how similar two years (like 1972 and 1992) felt. The results were startling: instead of linear comparisons, larger models automatically centered their judgment around a reference year — typically close to 2025 — and applied a logarithmic perception of time. In other words, just like us, they feel that 2020 and 2030 are more similar than 1520 and 1530. ...