Use your mouth! How we respond to how and why questions - a comparative study

Abstract:

By investigating responses to how- and why-questions about everyday objects (e.g. “how do you use a bicycle” or “why do you eat ice cream”), it is possible not only to get insights into the reasoning processes of the respondent, but also into the underpinning assumptions (constituted by for example facts and norms) the reasoning is based on. Such “rules of thumb” for reasoning are sometimes referred to as topoi and provide the basis for rhetorical and common-sense reasoning. Which topoi are drawn on in dialogue is highly context dependent, both with regard to the situation and to the prior experiences of the dialogue participants. To explore this, we have asked children (aged 5 and 7) how- and why- questions under the pretence that the asker was an alien robot (represented by a cartoon avatar on a computer screen) with no knowledge of earth. In addition, we asked the same questions to adult participants, facilitating comparisons and potential insights regarding how reasoning and related assumptions change with age. Furthermore, we prompted an LLM with the same questions to evaluate to what extent the LLM mirrors human strategies for responding to these questions (with or without additional instructions to respond as a human of a certain age). Of all the investigated groups the, LLM stood out as the most different in terms of the answers. However, there were also both interesting similarities and differences between the different human age groups.

Research areas:

• Reasoning
• DivCon

Year:

2025

Type of Publication:

In Proceedings

Book title:

Human and Artificial Rationalities (HAR), Lecture Notes in Computer Science