# A Neuropsychologically Grounded Evaluation of LLM Cognitive Abilities

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.02540 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02540/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 44 of its 76 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 44)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Qwen2.5-VL Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13923/) (2025)
- [Qwen2-VL: Enhancing Vision-Language Model's Perception of the World at Any Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12191/) (2024)
- [Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06261/) (2025)
- [HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.09600/) (2018)
- [GPQA: A Graduate-Level Google-Proof Q&A Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12022/) (2023)
- [Qwen3-VL Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.21631/) (2025)
- [Qwen-VL: A Versatile Vision-Language Model for Understanding, Localization, Text Reading, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12966/) (2023)
- [LiveCodeBench: Holistic and Contamination Free Evaluation of Large Language Models for Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07974/) (2024)
- [Beyond the Imitation Game: Quantifying and extrapolating the capabilities of language models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.04615/) (2022)
- [MMLU-Pro: A More Robust and Challenging Multi-Task Language Understanding Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01574/) (2024)
- [Transformers are SSMs: Generalized Models and Efficient Algorithms Through Structured State Space Duality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.21060/) (2024)
- [OpenAI GPT-5 System Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.03267/) (2025)
- [τ2-Bench: Evaluating Conversational Agents in a Dual-Control Environment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07982/) (2025)
- [Terminal-Bench: Benchmarking Agents on Hard, Realistic Tasks in Command Line Interfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.11868/) (2026)
- [MMMU-Pro: A More Robust Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.02813/) (2024)
- [LLMs Get Lost In Multi-Turn Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.06120/) (2025)
- [Titans: Learning to Memorize at Test Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00663/) (2024)
- [RAVEN: A Dataset for Relational and Analogical Visual rEasoNing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.02741/) (2019)
- [Generalizing Verifiable Instruction Following](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02833/) (2025)
- [Compressing Context to Enhance Inference Efficiency of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06201/) (2023)
- [MultiChallenge: A Realistic Multi-Turn Conversation Evaluation Benchmark Challenging to Frontier LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.17399/) (2025)
- [SciCode: A Research Coding Benchmark Curated by Scientists](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13168/) (2024)
- [Language models show human-like content effects on reasoning tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.07051/) (2022)
- [MMDU: A Multi-Turn Multi-Image Dialog Understanding Benchmark and Instruction-Tuning Dataset for LVLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11833/) (2024)
- [CriticBench: Benchmarking LLMs for Critique-Correct Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14809/) (2024)
- [Cartridges: Lightweight and general-purpose long context representations via self-study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06266/) (2025)
- [MT-Eval: A Multi-Turn Capabilities Evaluation Benchmark for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.16745/) (2024)
- [It's All Connected: A Journey Through Test-Time Memorization, Attentional Bias, Retention, and Online Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13173/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [WMF-AM: Probing LLM Working Memory via Depth-Parameterized Cumulative State Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.27343/) (2026)
- [NeuroState-Bench: A Human-Calibrated Benchmark for Commitment Integrity in LLM Agent Profiles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.01847/) (2026)
- [Domain-level metacognitive monitoring in frontier LLMs: A 33-model atlas](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.06673/) (2026)
- [CogArena: A Multimethod Evaluation of Cognitive Ability Structure in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.24999/) (2026)
- [Large-scale factor analysis shows machine intelligence is only partially interpretable](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.36515/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large language models (LLMs) display a unified "general factor" of capability across 10 benchmarks (a finding confirmed by our factor analysis of 156 models), yet they still struggle with simple, trivial tasks for humans. This is because current benchmarks focus on task completion, failing to probe the foundational cognitive abilities that highlight these behaviors. We address this by introducing the NeuroCognition benchmark, grounded in three adapted neuropsychological tests targeting distinct foundational cognitive components: Raven's Progressive Matrices (abstract relational reasoning), Spatial Working Memory (goal-directed spatial updating), and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (cognitive flexibility). Our evaluation reveals that while models perform strongly on text, their performance degrades for images and with increased complexity. Comparison with a human baseline shows that LLMs and humans fail at different parts of the same tasks. Furthermore, we observe that complex reasoning is not universally beneficial, whereas simple, human-like strategies yield partial gains. We also find that NeuroCognition correlates positively with standard general-capability benchmarks, while still measuring distinct cognitive abilities beyond them. Overall, NeuroCognition emphasizes where current LLMs align with human-like intelligence and where they lack core adaptive cognition, showing the potential to serve as a verifiable, scalable source for improving LLMs.