CogToM: A Comprehensive Theory of Mind Benchmark inspired by Human Cognition for Large Language Models
Haibo Tong, Zeyang Yue, Feifei Zhao, Erliang Lin, Lu Jia, Ruolin Chen, Yinqian Sun, Qian Zhang, Yi Zeng
Abstract
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 to capture the full spectrum of human cognitive mechanisms. We introduce Cog-ToM, a comprehensive, theoretically grounded benchmark comprising over 8000 bilingual instances across 46 paradigms, validated by 49 human annotator.A systematic evaluation of 22 representative models, including frontier models like GPT-5.1 and Qwen3-Max, reveals significant performance heterogeneities and highlights persistent bottlenecks in specific dimensions. Further analysis based on human cognitive patterns suggests potential divergences between LLM and human cognitive structures. CogToM offers a robust instrument and perspective for investigating the evolving cognitive boundaries of LLMs.
Ask about this paper
Your agent reads all of it.
Lune indexed this paper to the last equation, along with the top-tier papers that cite it. Ask a question and the answer quotes them.
Your agent calls
Luneget_paper_fulltext
Free to start. No credit card required.
Terminal
Install the CLIlune papers fulltext cc59f1f9-14f3-42d3-8b93-0dc4f963bb81Builds on3
- SimpleToM: Exposing the Gap between Explicit ToM Inference and Implicit ToM Application in LLMsYuling Gu, Oyvind Tafjord, Hyunwoo Kim, Jared Moore et al.ICLR 2026 · 39 citations
- FANToM: A Benchmark for Stress-testing Machine Theory of Mind in InteractionsHyunwoo Kim, Melanie Sclar, Xuhui Zhou, Ronan Le Bras et al.EMNLP 2023 · 21 citations
- EmoBench: Evaluating the Emotional Intelligence of Large Language ModelsSahand Sabour, Siyang Liu, Zheyuan Zhang, June M. Liu et al.ACL 2024
Related papers
- ToMBench: Benchmarking Theory of Mind in Large Language ModelsZhuang Chen, Jincenzi Wu, Jinfeng Zhou, Bosi Wen et al.ACL 2024 · 6 citations
- Explore Theory of Mind: program-guided adversarial data generation for theory of mind reasoningMelanie Sclar, Jane Dwivedi-Yu, Maryam Fazel-Zarandi, Yulia Tsvetkov et al.ICLR 2025
- Theory of Mind in Large Language Models: Assessment and EnhancementRuirui Chen, Weifeng Jiang, Chengwei Qin, Cheston TanACL 2025
- Perceptions to Beliefs: Exploring Precursory Inferences for Theory of Mind in Large Language ModelsChani Jung, Dongkwan Kim, Jiho Jin, Jiseon Kim et al.EMNLP 2024 · 2 citations
- TimeBench: A Comprehensive Evaluation of Temporal Reasoning Abilities in Large Language ModelsZheng Chu, Jingchang Chen, Qianglong Chen, Weijiang Yu et al.ACL 2024 · 12 citations
