Towards a psychology of machines: large language models predict human memory

Abstract

Large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, have shown remarkable abilities in natural language processing, opening new avenues in psychological research. This study explores whether LLMs can predict human memory performance in tasks involving garden-path sentences and contextual information. In the first part, we used ChatGPT and Google Gemini to rate the relatedness and memorability of garden-path sentences preceded by either fitting or unfitting contexts. In the second part, human participants read the same sentences, rated their relatedness, and completed a surprise memory test. The results demonstrated that ChatGPT and Google Gemini’s relatedness ratings closely matched those of the human participants, and their memorability ratings effectively aligned with human memory performance. Both LLM and human data revealed that higher relatedness in the unfitting context condition was associated with better memory performance, aligning with probabilistic frameworks of context-dependent learning. These findings suggest that LLMs, despite lacking human-like memory mechanisms, can model aspects of human cognition and serve as valuable tools in psychological research. The field of machine psychology explores this interplay between human cognition and artificial intelligence, offering a bidirectional approach where LLMs can both benefit from and contribute to our understanding of human cognitive processes.

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