mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Beneath Surface Similarity: Large Language Models Make Reasonable Scientific Analogies after Structure Abduction

arXiv 2305.12660 ↗First posted 22 May 2023cs.CL cs.AIcited by 11

On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation

Abstract (arXiv)

The vital role of analogical reasoning in human cognition allows us to grasp novel concepts by linking them with familiar ones through shared relational structures. Despite the attention previous research has given to word analogies, this work suggests that Large Language Models (LLMs) often overlook the structures that underpin these analogies, raising questions about the efficacy of word analogies as a measure of analogical reasoning skills akin to human cognition. In response to this, our paper introduces a task of analogical structure abduction, grounded in cognitive psychology, designed to abduce structures that form an analogy between two systems. In support of this task, we establish a benchmark called SCAR, containing 400 scientific analogies from 13 distinct fields, tailored for evaluating analogical reasoning with structure abduction. The empirical evidence underlines the continued challenges faced by LLMs, including ChatGPT and GPT-4, in mastering this task, signifying the need for future exploration to enhance their abilities.

Key facts. Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 27 of its 76 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 22 May 2023.

Builds on

27 of 76 references.

Closest ancestors · 5

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023ANALOGYKB: Unlocking Analogical Reasoning of Language Models with A Million-scale Knowledge Base10 May
  2. 2023LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models27 Feb
  3. 2023Fluid Transformers and Creative Analogies: Exploring Large Language Models' Capacity for Augmenting Cross-Domain Analogical Creativity27 Feb
  4. 2022Emergent Analogical Reasoning in Large Language Models19 Dec
  5. 2022E-KAR: A Benchmark for Rationalizing Natural Language Analogical Reasoning16 Mar

Other references · 22

  1. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,419
  2. 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,971
  3. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,459
  4. 2019Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networkscited by 9,170
  5. 2013Efficient Estimation of Word Representations in Vector Spacecited by 4,375
  6. 2022Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasonerscited by 4,374
  7. 2021SimCSE: Simple Contrastive Learning of Sentence Embeddingscited by 2,173
  8. 2022Learn to Explain: Multimodal Reasoning via Thought Chains for Science Question Answeringcited by 1,919
  9. 2022Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineerscited by 1,045
  10. 2023LLaMA-Adapter: Efficient Fine-tuning of Language Models with Zero-init Attentioncited by 781
  11. 2023Plan-and-Solve Prompting: Improving Zero-Shot Chain-of-Thought Reasoning by Large Language Modelscited by 560
  12. 2020UnifiedQA: Crossing Format Boundaries With a Single QA Systemcited by 476
10 more
  1. 2021Abstraction and Analogy-Making in Artificial Intelligencecited by 103
  2. 2023Can ChatGPT Assess Human Personalities? A General Evaluation Frameworkcited by 70
  3. 2019Analogies Explained: Towards Understanding Word Embeddingscited by 64
  4. 2021BERT is to NLP what AlexNet is to CV: Can Pre-Trained Language Models Identify Analogies?cited by 56
  5. 2018Analogical Reasoning on Chinese Morphological and Semantic Relationscited by 50
  6. 2022Analogy Generation by Prompting Large Language Models: A Case Study of InstructGPTcited by 27
  7. 2022Life is a Circus and We are the Clowns: Automatically Finding Analogies between Situations and Processescited by 22
  8. 2022Multimodal Analogical Reasoning over Knowledge Graphscited by 21
  9. 2020Analogies minus analogy test: measuring regularities in word embeddingscited by 17
  10. 2022Scientific and Creative Analogies in Pretrained Language Modelscited by 7

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 5; 2025: 2; 2026: 4.

11 papers.

  1. 2024AnaloBench: Benchmarking the Identification of Abstract and Long-context Analogiescited by 13
  2. 2024ParallelPARC: A Scalable Pipeline for Generating Natural-Language Analogiescited by 8
  3. 2024Creativity in AI: Progresses and Challengescited by 7
  4. 2025A Review of Incorporating Psychological Theories in LLMscited by 6
  5. 2024Boosting Scientific Concepts Understanding: Can Analogy from Teacher Models Empower Student Models?cited by 3
  6. 2024Past Meets Present: Creating Historical Analogy with Large Language Modelscited by 1
  7. 2025Analogical Structure, Minimal Contextual Cues and Contrastive Distractors: Input Design for Sample-Efficient Linguistic Rule Inductioncited by 1
  8. 2026Can Large Language Models Generalize Procedures Across Representations?cited by 1
  9. 2026Structural Ranking of the Cognitive Plausibility of Computational Models of Analogy and Metaphors with the Minimal Cognitive Gridcited by 0
  10. 2026Teaching Through Analogies: A Modular Pipeline for Educational Analogy Generationcited by 0
  11. 2026PRISM: A Category-Theoretic Framework for Measuring and Refining Multimodal Analogiescited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2024LLMs as Models for Analogical Reasoning
  2. 2025The Curious Case of Analogies: Investigating Analogical Reasoning in Large Language Models
  3. 2025Modeling Understanding of Story-Based Analogies Using Large Language Models
  4. 2023ARN: Analogical Reasoning on Narratives
  5. 2025Modelling Analogies and Analogical Reasoning: Connecting Cognitive Science Theory and NLP Research
  6. 2024Using Counterfactual Tasks to Evaluate the Generality of Analogical Reasoning in Large Language Models
  7. 2023Can language models learn analogical reasoning? Investigating training objectives and comparisons to human performance
  8. 2024Evaluating the Robustness of Analogical Reasoning in Large Language Models