# Views Are My Own, but Also Yours: Benchmarking Theory of Mind Using Common Ground

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.02451 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.02451/

## Key facts

- Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Mar 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Large Language Models Fail on Trivial Alterations to Theory-of-Mind Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08399/) (2023)
- [FANToM: A Benchmark for Stress-testing Machine Theory of Mind in Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.15421/) (2023)
- [Minding Language Models' (Lack of) Theory of Mind: A Plug-and-Play Multi-Character Belief Tracker](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00924/) (2023)
- [Evaluating Theory of Mind in Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.09352/) (2018)
- [MindCraft: Theory of Mind Modeling for Situated Dialogue in Collaborative Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.06275/) (2021)
- [MindGames: Targeting Theory of Mind in Large Language Models with Dynamic Epistemic Modal Logic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.03353/) (2023)
- [Finding Common Ground: Annotating and Predicting Common Ground in Spoken Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01273/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [MuMA-ToM: Multi-modal Multi-Agent Theory of Mind](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12574/) (2024)
- [Theory of Mind in Large Language Models: Assessment and Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.00026/) (2025)
- [SoMi-ToM: Evaluating Multi-Perspective Theory of Mind in Embodied Social Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23046/) (2025)
- [Rethinking Theory of Mind Benchmarks for LLMs: Towards A User-Centered Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.10839/) (2025)
- [LVLMs are Bad at Overhearing Human Referential Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.11514/) (2025)
- [A Review of Incorporating Psychological Theories in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.00003/) (2025)
- [DialToM: A Theory of Mind Benchmark for Forecasting State-Driven Dialogue Trajectories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.20443/) (2026)
- [A formal definition and meta-model for a machine theory of mind](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.03471/) (2026)
- [Sensitivity Meets Sparsity: The Impact of Extremely Sparse Parameter Patterns on Theory-of-Mind of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04238/) (2025)
- [textttDIAMONDs: A Dataset for mathbbDynamic mathbbInformation mathbbAnd mathbbMental modeling mathbbOf mathbbNumeric mathbbDiscussions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.12651/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Evaluating the theory of mind (ToM) capabilities of language models (LMs) has recently received a great deal of attention. However, many existing benchmarks rely on synthetic data, which risks misaligning the resulting experiments with human behavior. We introduce the first ToM dataset based on naturally occurring spoken dialogs, Common-ToM, and show that LMs struggle to demonstrate ToM. We then show that integrating a simple, explicit representation of beliefs improves LM performance on Common-ToM.