Beyond the limitations of any imaginable mechanism: large language models and psycholinguistics
This work addresses the role of LLMs in psycholinguistics for researchers, but it is incremental as it synthesizes existing ideas without new empirical results.
The paper argues that large language models (LLMs) are not accurate models of human language processing but are valuable in psycholinguistics as practical tools, comparative examples, and for rethinking language-thought relationships.
Large language models are not detailed models of human linguistic processing. They are, however, extremely successful at their primary task: providing a model for language. For this reason and because there are no animal models for language, large language models are important in psycholinguistics: they are useful as a practical tool, as an illustrative comparative, and philosophically, as a basis for recasting the relationship between language and thought.