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We propose a hybrid approach to machine Theory of Mind (ToM) that uses large language models (LLMs) as a mechanism for generating hypotheses and likelihood functions with a Bayesian inverse planning model that computes posterior…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-07-08 Rebekah A. Gelpí , Eric Xue , William A. Cunningham

Theory of Mind (ToM)-an understanding of the mental states of others-is a key aspect of human social intelligence, yet, chatbots and LLM-based social agents do not typically integrate it. In this work, we demonstrate that LLMs that…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-14 EunJeong Hwang , Yuwei Yin , Giuseppe Carenini , Peter West , Vered Shwartz

Theory of Mind (ToM) is central to social cognition and human-AI interaction, and Large Language Models (LLMs) have been used to help understand and represent ToM. However, most evaluations treat ToM as a static judgment at a single moment,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Thuy Ngoc Nguyen , Duy Nhat Phan , Cleotilde Gonzalez

A growing body of work attempts to evaluate the theory of mind (ToM) abilities of humans and large language models (LLMs) using static, non-interactive question-and-answer benchmarks. However, theoretical work in the field suggests that…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-02-20 Jared Moore , Rasmus Overmark , Ned Cooper , Beba Cibralic , Nick Haber , Cameron R. Jones

Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to attribute mental states to others, is a hallmark of social intelligence. While large language models (LLMs) demonstrate promising performance on standard ToM benchmarks, we observe that they often fail…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-14 Mengfan Li , Xuanhua Shi , Yang Deng

Theory-of-Mind (ToM) enables humans to infer mental states-such as beliefs, desires, and intentions-forming the foundation of social cognition. However, existing computational ToM methods rely on structured workflows with ToM-specific…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Chunhui Zhang , Zhongyu Ouyang , Kwonjoon Lee , Nakul Agarwal , Sean Dae Houlihan , Soroush Vosoughi , Shao-Yuan Lo

We introduce StorySim, a programmable framework for synthetically generating stories to evaluate the theory of mind (ToM) and world modeling (WM) capabilities of large language models (LLMs). Unlike prior benchmarks that may suffer from…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Nathaniel Getachew , Abulhair Saparov

In this paper, a pragmatic semantic communication framework that enables effective goal-oriented information sharing between two-intelligent agents is proposed. In particular, semantics is defined as the causal state that encapsulates the…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2023-12-01 Christo Kurisummoottil Thomas , Emilio Calvanese Strinati , Walid Saad

Neural Theory-of-Mind (N-ToM), machine's ability to understand and keep track of the mental states of others, is pivotal in developing socially intelligent agents. However, prevalent N-ToM benchmarks have several shortcomings, including the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-06-04 Hainiu Xu , Runcong Zhao , Lixing Zhu , Jinhua Du , Yulan He

Do Large Language Models (LLMs) possess a Theory of Mind (ToM)? Research into this question has focused on evaluating LLMs against benchmarks and found success across a range of social tasks. However, these evaluations do not test for the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-27 John Muchovej , Amanda Royka , Shane Lee , Julian Jara-Ettinger

Evaluating the theory of mind (ToM) capabilities of language models (LMs) has recently received a great deal of attention. However, many existing benchmarks rely on synthetic data, which risks misaligning the resulting experiments with…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-11 Adil Soubki , John Murzaku , Arash Yousefi Jordehi , Peter Zeng , Magdalena Markowska , Seyed Abolghasem Mirroshandel , Owen Rambow

Theory of Mind (ToM) is a critical component of intelligence but its assessment remains the subject of heated debates. Prior research applied human ToM assessments to natural language processing models using either human-created…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-11-08 Damien Sileo , Antoine Lernould

The last couple of years have witnessed emerging research that appropriates Theory-of-Mind (ToM) tasks designed for humans to benchmark LLM's ToM capabilities as an indication of LLM's social intelligence. However, this approach has a…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2025-04-16 Qiaosi Wang , Xuhui Zhou , Maarten Sap , Jodi Forlizzi , Hong Shen

Whether Large Language Models (LLMs) truly possess human-like Theory of Mind (ToM) capabilities has garnered increasing attention. However, existing benchmarks remain largely restricted to narrow paradigms like false belief tasks, failing…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-23 Haibo Tong , Zeyang Yue , Feifei Zhao , Erliang Lin , Lu Jia , Ruolin Chen , Yinqian Sun , Qian Zhang , Yi Zeng

Persuasive dialogue requires reasoning about others' latent mental states, a capability known as Theory of Mind (ToM). However, due to reliance on simple prompting strategies and insufficient ToM knowledge, existing LLMs often fail to…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Minghui Ma , Bin Guo , Runze Yang , Mengqi Chen , Yan Liu , Jingqi Liu , Yahan Pei , Xuehao Ma , Qiuyun Zhang , Zhiwen Yu

Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to understand people's minds based on their behavior, is key to developing socially intelligent agents. Current approaches to ToM reasoning either rely on prompting Large Language Models (LLMs), which are…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-15 Zhining Zhang , Chuanyang Jin , Mung Yao Jia , Shunchi Zhang , Tianmin Shu

Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to infer others' knowledge, intentions, and emotions, is commonly evaluated in large language models (LLMs) using end-point question answering, where performance is judged solely by the final answer to a…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-27 Adam Bawatneh , Sagar Sapkota , Amrit Singh Bedi , Santu Karmaker , Mubarak Shah

Do large language models (LLMs) have theory of mind? A plethora of papers and benchmarks have been introduced to evaluate if current models have been able to develop this key ability of social intelligence. However, all rely on limited…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-18 Melanie Sclar , Jane Yu , Maryam Fazel-Zarandi , Yulia Tsvetkov , Yonatan Bisk , Yejin Choi , Asli Celikyilmaz

Theory of Mind (ToM), the capacity to comprehend the mental states of distinct individuals, is essential for numerous practical applications. With the development of large language models (LLMs), there is a heated debate about whether they…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-29 Xiaomeng Ma , Lingyu Gao , Qihui Xu

Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability to infer others' mental states, such as beliefs, desires, and intentions. Current vision-language embodied agents lack ToM-based decision-making, and existing benchmarks focus solely on human…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-25 Ruoxuan Zhang , Qiyun Zheng , Zhiyu Zhou , Ziqi Liao , Siyu Wu , Jian-Yu Jiang-Lin , Bin Wen , Hongxia Xie , Jianlong Fu , Wen-Huang Cheng