Structural Ranking of the Cognitive Plausibility of Computational Models of Analogy and Metaphors with the Minimal Cognitive Grid
For researchers in cognitive science and AI, this provides a systematic, quantitative method to compare cognitive plausibility of analogy and metaphor models, though it is an incremental application of an existing framework.
The paper operationalizes the Minimal Cognitive Grid (MCG) to quantitatively assess and rank the cognitive plausibility of computational models of analogy and metaphor, including SME, CogSketch, METCL, and LLMs, based on three dimensions.
In this paper, we employ the Minimal Cognitive Grid (MCG), a framework created to evaluate the cognitive plausibility of artificial systems, to offer a systematic assessment of leading computational models of analogy and metaphor, including the Structure-Mapping Engine (SME), CogSketch, METCL, and Large Language Models (LLMs). We present a formal and quantitative operationalization of the MCG framework and, through the analysis of its three main dimensions (Functional/Structural Ratio, Generality, and Performance Match), examine how well each system aligns with standard cognitive theories of the modeled phenomena, thus allowing for comparison of the models with respect to their cognitive plausibility, according to consistent and generalizable mathematical criteria.