Keynotes | K&Ts | GACs | Talks | Posters | Search

Poster C in Poster Session C: Wednesday, August 5, 9:30 – 11:15 am, Kimmel Center, Shorin & Rosenthal Rooms

Attentional Alignment in Abstract Reasoning across Developing Minds and Machines

Eva R. Wardenaar¹, Christopher Pinier¹, Gustaw Opielka¹, Tamar Johnson¹, Claire E Stevenson¹; ¹University of Amsterdam

Presenter: Eva R. Wardenaar

Abstract reasoning is fundamental to human intelligence and develops through a shift from surface-based responding to relational reasoning. For example, on problems like "⧫∙∙⧫▴▪▪ ?" young children tend to duplicate the last term, responding ▪, whereas older children use relational reasoning and respond ▴. Based on eye-tracking studies we see not only a shift in behavior, but also a shift in children's attention, where duplicators focus on salient or recent elements, whereas relational reasoners focus more on positions diagnostic for the underlying rule. Recent work shows that large language models (LLMs) also shift from duplication to relational responding on abstract reasoning tasks over the course of their training. In this study, we investigate whether this is accompanied by a similar shift in attentional focus in LLMs. Eye-tracking data from duplicating children, relational reasoning children and adults on a simple abstract pattern completion task are compared to self-attention patterns in OLMo 3 Base 32B at pre- and post-shift checkpoints. This comparison tests whether the direction and shape of OLMo’s attentional change follows the human developmental trend and introduces a novel process-level method for relating human eye-movements to LLM attention weights.

Topic Area: Development, Individual Differences & Clinical Populations